The relationship between social support and Posttraumatic Growth in mothers following childbirth.

Posttraumatic Growth (PTG) refers to positive changes that occur in an individual’s life following a traumatic experience, sometimes alongside distress and symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD); this growth can occur on dimensions of Personal strength, New possibilities, Appreciation of life, Relating to others and Spiritual and existential change (Tedeschi, Cann, Taku, Senol-Durak & Calhoun, 2017). This research aims to assess whether certain dimensions of social support (frequency, satisfaction, type and source) influenced the development of PTG in mothers following childbirth; this is important as there is limited research in this area, despite 34 percent of mothers experiencing birth trauma (Soet, Brack & Dilorio, 2003). Mothers were recruited through social media and mother-and-baby groups to complete online versions of the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) (Weiss & Marmar, 1996), Posttraumatic Growth Inventory-Expanded (PTGI-X) (Tedeschi et al., 2017) and Questionnaire on the Frequency of and Satisfaction with Social Support (QFSSS) (García-Martín, Hombrados-Mendieta & Gómez-Jacinto, 2016). Regression analysis revealed that Frequent Instrumental Support from Friends and Satisfactory Instrumental Support from Family tends to foster PTG, whilst Frequent Instrumental Support from Family tends to inhibit PTG. This is the first study to show that not all social support contributes to birth-related PTG and therefore provides valuable new information to inform theoretical models and future research. These findings also have important clinical implications as health professionals could encourage mothers to develop ‘support plans’ during pregnancy and meet other mothers in ‘befriender services’.