Post-Traumatic Growth Leadership: Mitigating Stress in a High-Risk Occupation

High-risk occupations include exposure to potentially traumatic events that impact mental health. While leadership and benefit finding have been found to buffer the impact of these stressor-strain relationships, specific leadership behaviors that target mental health may also mitigate the impact of occupationally-relevant traumatic experiences. Building on the post-traumatic growth literature, the present study examined the validity of a new Post-Traumatic Growth - Leadership Scale (PTG-LS) that measures leader behaviors designed to promote post-traumatic growth in team members. Junior enlisted U.S. soldiers (N=1181) completed an anonymous survey 4 months following return from a combat deployment. Results illustrated that the PTG-LS demonstrated good reliability and validity. Soldiers with higher PTG-LS scores accounted for fewer soldiers screening positive for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and depression as well as greater unit cohesion and perceived organizational support, even after accounting for general military leadership and individual benefit finding in separate models. Results also indicated that these domain-specific leadership behaviors buffered the relationship between combat exposure and PTSD. Implications for training leaders, particularly in the aftermath of occupationally-related traumatic events, are discussed.