Improving post-traumatic growth of disaster survivors: An integrative literature review

The psychological aspect is one of the important aspects of the affected disaster survivors. The change in the disaster management paradigm is one reason for the need to change interventions that previously only focused on handling posttraumatic distress syndrome into interventions to increase post-traumatic growth to prevent post-disaster psychological disorders. This review aims to synthesise recent research to develop further explanations regarding potential strategies to improve the post-traumatic growth of disaster survivors.

This is an integrative review of previous studies. Articles were identified via SCOPUS, EMBASE, JSTOR, PROQUEST, MEDLINE and grey literature (Google Scholar). All subject-relevant literature from 2000 to 2022 was identified. This review included quantitative and qualitative studies and literature reviews, with criteria: all types of interventions used to improve the post-traumatic growth of disaster survivors and potential influencing factors that may affect the implementation as well as other relevant outcomes.

From 400 initial search studies, 27 studies (24 quantitative. one qualitative, and two mixed methods) were eligible to be included in the review. Some factors promoting post-traumatic growth included religious coping, culture, social support, the severity of the trauma, coping strategies, education level and work satisfaction.

By systematically exploring the factors that foster post-traumatic growth of disaster survival, this integrative review will give fundamental information to develop an intervention that prevents or minimises the psychological impacts of a disaster towards survivors.