[Coping with stress in those who experienced a traumatic situation]

Abstract

Aim: Does the traumatic experience influence the choice of a particular coping style? If yes, which style is preferred by those who experienced trauma? Answering these two essential questions is the aim of this paper. The authors have accepted the assumption (Holman, Silver, 1998), that the individuals who experienced trauma prefer past temporal orientation and they present a higher level of distress.

Method: The authors investigated two groups. The experimental group consisted of 46 victims of the Gdańsk Shipyard concert hall fire. The control group comprised the 41 individuals who never experienced any trauma. Two psychological methods were used. CISS--Endler and Parker, which measures coping styles. STAI--Spielberger and al., was the second method used for measuring the level of anxiety as an essential distress indicator.

Results and conclusions: The results show, that individuals who experienced trauma, presented a significantly higher level of anxiety and that the victims of trauma prefer the emotional coping style. The difference is statistically significant. There is also an indirect conclusion (based on these results), which confirms the above mentioned assumption.