Secondary Growth Among Former Prisoners of War's Adult Children: The Result of Exposure to Stress, Secondary Traumatization, or Personality Traits?

The long-term toll of war captivity on secondary traumatization (ST) on adult children has recently been exemplified. Several studies have also revealed that indirect exposure to trauma might be accompanied by positive psychological changes. This study examined secondary posttraumatic growth (SG) among adult children of former prisoners of war (ex-POWs’ children) who were compared with adult children of comparable veterans (controls’ children). Furthermore, we examined the role of five-factor personality traits in the associations between exposure to stress stemming from fathers’ behaviors, ST symptoms, and SG. Participants were Israeli ex-POWs’ children (N 98) and controls’ children (N 90), whose fathers fought in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Results show that ex-POWs’ children reported higher levels of SG compared with controls’ children. ST symptoms were found to mediate the association between research group and SG, and the direct effect was found to be conditioned at the levels of participants’ extroversion. Furthermore, among ex-POWs’ children, extroversion and openness to the experience personality traits, as well as exposure to stress, were found to predict SG. Forty years after the war ended, the experience of living with ex-POWs is associated with ex-POWs’ children SG that might be more related to their exposure to stress and personality traits than their ST symptoms. Clinical interventions aiming to increase the levels of SG among indirect victims of captivity should consider the influence of pretrauma resources, trauma characteristics, and posttrauma factors.