Traumatic Events, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Post-Traumatic Growth among University Students in Kabul City

Although trauma and PTSD are relatively common in Afghanistan, not everyone who is exposed to such events goes on to develop PTSD. In actuality, some people demonstrate resilience and experience positive psychological transformation, a phenomenon known as post-traumatic growth. This research focused on exploring how traumatic experiences and PTSD symptoms are structurally linked to PTG in university students. 250 students participated through the snowball sampling method. The Traumatic Experience Checklist, PCL-5, and PTGI questionnaires, with acceptable reliability, were used to collect the data. The data was analyzed using SPSS-24. The results indicate that most participants went through multiple traumatic events, and more than half (61.2%) of the participants personally experienced a natural disaster, 29.3% were witnesses of traffic accidents, and 33.6% heard about an assault with a weapon. The prevalence of PTSD symptoms was 48.8% and 35.6% of participants reported experiencing moderate to high degrees of PTG. Furthermore, the results showed that traumatic experiences and symptoms of PTSD directly influence and significantly predict PTG. It can be concluded that experience of traumatic events and PTSD may lead to a positive change. These results can guide future research to examine the mechanisms and moderating factors like resilience, social support and ways of coping and that influence this relationship.. Interventions can be designed not only to treat PTSD but also to nurture PTG by incorporating trauma-informed and strength-based approaches.