Posttraumatic growth after war: a study with former refugees and displaced people in Sarajevo

Abstract

Research carried out with survivors of a variety of different traumata indicates that a large proportion of them perceive positive changes in themselves after the trauma. This study investigated whether posttraumatic growth also could be found among people who had been exposed to particularly severe traumata over a period of several years (1991 to 1995) during the war in the area of the former Yugoslavia. Included in the study were two representative samples of adult former refugees and displaced people who lived anywhere in former Yugoslavia before the war and were currently living in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, three and a half years after the war. The main instrument was a new Bosnian translation of the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory. Results indicated some differences in the factor structure as compared with the original instrument. The overall means for the scale were considerably lower than reported in most studies on other kinds of trauma. Younger people reported considerably more growth than older people.