Virtue and Psychosocial Adaptation

Helping people who struggle with traumatic life adversities, adjust can be a great challenge. For example, individuals with such issues must cope with unexpected and unfamiliar problems soon after the life adversities, and in many cases, for years afterward. Many experience frustration, struggle with intense desire to recover quickly and completely, and some yearn for their former lives. Though there are commonalities, individual’s adjustment differs to the extent to which they face and overcome each of these challenges.

A traditional research trends in this area is to examine the association between post-traumatic growth and individuals’ innate disposition such as personality. For instance, PTSD symptoms were positively correlated with harm avoidance and self-transcendence, and negatively with self-directedness and cooperativeness (Crestani et al., 2019). However, one challenge in traditional approach is that the nature of innate disposition is viewed as fixed traits,  it doesn’t change over time, thus such findings are limited from a clinical perspective.

A new fast-growing approach emerged from the field of rehabilitation psychology in explaining posttraumatic growth is Virtue-Based Psychosocial Adaptation Model (V-PAM; Kim et al., 2016). V-PAM is unique in that psychosocial adaptation and post-traumatic growth after life adversities are viewed as a positive by-product of having endured adversities while transforming them into insightful opportunities for renewal. In V-PAM, this process is explained in terms of five virtues, including courage, integrity, practical wisdom, committed action and emotional transcendence. And, detail of V-PAM is explained further in “V-PAM Theory.”

Reference

Crestani Calegaro V, Canova Mosele PH, Lorenzi Negretto B, Zatti C, Miralha da Cunha AB, Machado Freitas LH. (2019). The role of personality in posttraumatic stress disorder, trait resilience, and quality of life in people exposed to the Kiss nightclub fire. PLoS ONE 14(7): e0220472.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220472

Kim, J. H., Gonzalez, R., Hawley, C., McMahon, B. T., Lee, D. H., Lee, J. H., Johnson, K., & Lee., Y. W. (2018). Resilience from a virtue perspective: Rehabilitation Counseling Bulletin. 61(4), 195-204.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0034355217714995