Military Mental Health

Posttraumatic Growth in Combat Veterans

January 1, 2011
Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings

This article focuses on PTG in service members and offers insights into a therapeutic approach that can help facilitate this process. By integrating the principles of the PTG model into clinical practice, therapists can play a vital role in supporting combat veterans on their path toward healing, resilience, and positive transformation.

Before soldiers or service members’ families can discern how PTG may occur, it is important for them to understand the 'seismic' nature of trauma experience, especially shattered beliefs about one’s self, others, and the future.
Dr. Tedeschi

Combat veterans and their families face significant challenges not only to their abilities to cope, but often to their fundamental belief systems. Traumatic events represent assaults on core beliefs, yet at times, produce cognitive processing that can ultimately result in personal transformations called posttraumatic growth (PTG).

Clinicians can utilize a systematic therapeutic approach to facilitate PTG as they carry out a relationship of expert companionship. PTG in service members is described in this article, as well as the approach to facilitation of PTG.

Read the Article “Posttraumatic Growth in Combat Veterans:” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10880-011-9255-2

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