Exploring the relationship between posttraumatic growth, cognitive processing, psychological distress, and social constraints in a sample of breast cancer patients

Posttraumatic growth (the perception of positive life changes after an encounter with a trauma) often occurs among breast cancer patients and can be influenced by certain demographic, medical, and psychosocial parameters. Social constraints on disclosure (the deprivation of the opportunity to express feelings and thoughts regarding the trauma) and the cognitive processing of the disease seem to be involved in the development of posttraumatic growth. Through the present study the authors aim to: investigate the levels of posttraumatic growth in a sample of 202 women with breast cancer in Greece, explore the relationships between posttraumatic growth and particular demographic, medical, and psychosocial variables according to a proposed model, and test the role of social constraints in the relationship between automatic and deliberate cognitive processing of the trauma. The results showed that posttraumatic growth was evident in the majority of the sample and was associated inversely with age at diagnosis (=-0.174, p<.05) and psychological distress (=-0.394, p=.001), directly with time since diagnosis (=0.181, p<.05), and indirectly with intrusions and psychological distress, through reflective rumination (=0.323, p=.001). Social constraints were found to moderate the relationship between intrusions and reflective rumination. Implications of the results and suggestions for future research and practice are outlined.