The article proves that there are more and more evidence to positive psychological changes that can be the result of one’s struggle with the consequences of stress and traumatic experiencing. The aim of our work is to show that post-traumatic stress and post-traumatic growth are possible to understand and to study within framework of integral psychosocial model. It is shown that within context of adaptation after the trauma, new approaches that arise up on the basis of positive psychology considerably differ from traditional accents on illness and abnormal psychology that mental health specialists often make. At first glance, historically young domain of positive psychology hardly can offer much interesting for those who study and work in the area of (post) traumatic stress. However, as we noticed earlier, it is necessary to make a new look at development of clinical psychology, in particular on that, how distribution of illness ideology separated research of post-traumatic stress from studies of post-traumatic growth instead of development of integral perspective for understanding of these forms of human experience within the limits of single model. Psychosocial model describes interaction between psychological and social factors for acceleration or improvement of cognitive-emotional processing. This model is psychosocial, because although the cognitive-emotional processing belongs to the area of internal psychological experience, its speed and depth however to a great extent are determined by socially-psychological factors. Important, that psychosocial model is based not on traditional medical understanding of illness and health, and consequently does not consider post-traumatic stress as separate result of trauma, analysing it instead as a natural process related to these factors. Essential features of post-traumatic stress are re-experiencing, avoidance, and arousal - examined within the framework of psychosocial model as experiencing of event cognitions: appraisal, coping and emotional states. Within the limits of this model the repeated experiencing, avoidance, and excitation are not examined as symptoms of pathology or disorder, but as markers of need of cognitive-emotional processing of the new trauma-related information. Moreover, these features are studied rather even as variables of a wide spectrum, but not only as dichotomic states that are either present or absent.
Bereavement, post-traumatic stress and post-traumatic growth: through the lenses of positive psychology
