In The Model of Life Crises and Personal Growth (Schaefer & Moos, 1992), the importance of coping responses is also depicted. Similarly Lazarus and Folkman (1984) indicated that the coping strategies that were used in order to deal with highly stressful life events, influenced individuals’ adjustment. According to Tedeschi (1999), individual’s ways of coping, and the manner of cognitively processing the trauma predicted the development of PTG. Jang (2006) proposed that the effects of traumatic events on individuals may be positive, negative or the mixture of positive and negative depending on their coping styles.
Şenol-Durak (2007) found that individuals who were not using indirect coping and those using problem-focused coping strategy had higher scores on PTG. Moreover, the results of the study conducted with rheumatoid arthritis patients demonstrated that problem-focused coping was positively related to the total score of posttraumatic growth (Dirik & Karanci, 2008). Accordingly, it was proposed that active problem-solving coping used to deal with negative life events was related to positive long-term outcomes (Butler, Blasey, Garlan, McCaslin, Azarow, Chen, Desjardins, DiMiceli, Seagraves, Hastings, Kraemer, & Speigel, 2005; Dekel, Mandl, & Solomon, 2011). The results of the study examining the factors that are related to PTG among myocardial infarction patients are consistent with these findings by demonstrating that higher problem-solving coping was related with greater PTG (Senol-Durak & Ayvasik, 2010). Furthermore, the findings of a meta-analytic study examining 103 studies demonstrated that religious coping strategy was a significant positive associate of PTG (Prati & Pietrantoni, 2009). The findings of Bosson et al. (2012) supported these findings adding a mediator variable namely deliberate rumination to the relationship between the religious coping style and PTG.
According to our best knowledge, there is scarce research about PTG among motor vehicle accident survivors. In their study conducted with accidentally injured patients, Wang et al. (2013), defined positive coping as “positive cognitive and behavioral strategies to manage emotional distress” and found that it was positively associated with the total score of PTG.
The relationship between the various types of rumination and the development of PTG is an important issue in terms of understanding the process of positive changes in the aftermath of the traumatic event.
The findings of the study conducted by Cann, Calhoun, Tedeschi, and Solomon (2010) demonstrated that PTG was positively related with the disruption of core beliefs and deliberate rumination; whereas, it was negatively related with intrusive rumination about the traumatic experience. It is crucial to work on these two types of rumination in order to understand the posttraumatic adaptation process leading to the occurrence of PTG.
Taku, Cann, Tedeschi, and Calhoun (2009) conducted a study with distinct traumatic events and two different samples. They compared the link between PTG and the rumination soon after the traumatic event, and the recent rumination about the event. The results of this study demonstrated that while intrusive rumination soon after the event was positively associated with PTG, recent deliberate rumination was more strongly associated with PTG in both samples. Furthermore, the findings of the study conducted with the participants who were exposed to a variety of traumatic events supported the findings of Taku et al. (2009). In this study, it was reported that deliberate rumination positively predicted PTG, whereas ruminative brooding was not associated with PTG (Stockton, Hunt, & Joseph, 2011).
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