Analysis of the relationship between post-traumatic growth and students’ personality in the conditions of full-scale war

Background. The phenomenon of post-traumatic growth (PTG), which consists of significant positive changes in the personality due to the experience of a difficult life crisis, is currently considered an effective countermeasure to the destructive consequences of psycho-emotional stress. Purpose – is to determine the individual psychological predictors of PTG among medical students in the context of a large-scale social crisis. Materials and methods. In compliance with the requirements of biomedical ethics and based on informed consent, an anonymous questionnaire and psychodiagnostic examination of 152 medical students was conducted during October– November 2024. According to the subjective assessment of the severity of the stress experienced by an individual during their life, the students were distributed as follows: 7.2% of the surveyed assessed the most severe stress they experienced in their lives as mild, 23.7% as moderate, 42.8% as severe, and 26.3% as very severe. The psychodiagnostic tools of the study consisted of The Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI) questionnaire, the Mini-Mult questionnaire, and the J.B. Rotter locus of control measurement questionnaire. Results. It was found that the individual-personal profiles of students with low and high PTG are somewhat similar, with differences in the expressiveness of character traits, which are manifested by significantly higher indicators on the Mini-Mult scales: hypochondria (53.49 ± 10.01 points in students with low PTG vs 48.80 ± 10.18 in students with high PTG, p = 0.002), depression (49.08 ± 11.51 points vs 42.17 ± 9.81, p < 0.0001), hysteria (51.70 ± 10.16 points vs 45.77 ± 9.71, p < 0.0001), psychopathy (51.09 ± 14.69 points vs 44.44 ± 13.83, p = 0.008), rigidity (49.40 ± 11.66 points vs 44.63 ± 10.25, p = 0.018), psychasthenia (52.31 ± 12.01 points vs 45.07 ± 12.36, p < 0.0001) and schizoidism (53.19 ± 10.78 points vs 48.28 ± 10.74, p = 0.014). Students with low PTG were characterized by the dominance of the external locus of control, which is associated with the tendency to consider one’s own successes or failures as the result of mainly external forces, passivity, a sense of one’s own inferiority, low self-esteem and self-respect, a low level of aspirations and a desire for external support and help: 12.61 ± 3.90 points vs 10.99 ± 3.19 (p = 0.004). Students with high PTG were characterized by a greater expressiveness of the internal locus of control, which is associated with the belief in the ability to influence the course of events through their own activity, a high level of aspirations, activity in achieving goals, independence in judgments and actions, the desire to change reality, high self-esteem, and orientation to their own efforts to overcome problems: 12.00 ± 3.20 points vs 10.39 ± 3.90 for students with low PTG (p = 0.005). Correlation analysis revealed significant inverse correlations of the PTGI index with the indicators on the scales of psychasthenia (rS = –0.360), depression (rS = –0.307), hysteria (rS = –0.283), psychopathy (rS = –0.276), schizoidism (rS = –0.235), hypochondria (rS = –0.222) and rigidity (rS = –0.170). External locus of control was negatively correlated with PTG, and internal locus of control was positively correlated with PTG (rS = 0.165 and rS = –0.165, respectively, p = 0.042). Conclusion. The results obtained allow us to conclude that individual and personality characteristics are an important, but not the only factor of PTG, and determine the need for further research into relevant factors that may have an impact on PTG.