Posttraumatic Growth and Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms in People with HIV

Receiving a diagnosis of HIV can be challenging. People with HIV (PWH) can experience high levels of distress, as well as some positive psychological changes associated with post-traumatic growth. However, the mechanisms which underlying the association of a highly stressful event (i.e., being diagnosed with HIV) and posttraumatic growth (PTG) and posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) are under-explored, and this is the focus of the study. Cross-sectional survey data were provided by 77 PWH living in New Zealand. An analysis examined the roles of deliberate rumination and coping strategies as serial mediators of the associations between event centrality and PTG and PTSSs. The relationships between event centrality and PTG and PTSSs were found to be sequentially mediated by deliberate rumination and avoidance coping, but not by deliberate rumination and active coping. Further analyses explored active coping and deliberate rumination as parallel mediators, with avoidance coping as a subsequent mediator, between event centrality and PTG and PTSSs. However, these analyses were not supported. The findings indicate that the more participants appraised the HIV diagnosis as central, the greater PTG they perceived; however, the more they deliberately ruminated on it, and the more avoidance coping they adopted, the less PTG and greater PTSSs they perceived. Future studies need to explore the relationships of event centrality and coping and their associations with PTG and PTSSs.