Proceedings of the 10th International Academic Conference on Humanities and Social Sciences
Year: 2024
DOI:
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How to Explain the Personal Adjustment of Civilian Victims of the War in Ukraine: A Study of Refugees
Piotr Oleś, Alicja Senejko, Ewa Gurba, Jan Kutnik, Tomasz Franc, Polina Pavlusenko
ABSTRACT:
This article presents the results of two studies on the influence of personality traits, attachment styles, and other variables, such as closeness to parents or intensity of threats, on the specificity of responses of Ukrainian immigrants. The results of the first study (n = 178) indicated that non-secure attachment styles (anxiety-avoidant and anxiety-ambivalent), along with frustration with the need for competence and severity of threats – were predictors of post-traumatic stress disorder. In contrast, secure style and closeness to the father were predictors of post-traumatic growth. The results of the second study (n = 160) showed that personality traits explained 26% of the variance in PTSD, with emotional stability being the strongest and only 6% of the variance of post-traumatic growth. Two key questions are discussed: (1) what better explains the severity of PTSD: traits or attachment styles; and (2) why PTSD was explained by a much more significant proportion of the variance than PTG.
keywords: attachment styles, posttraumatic growth, posttraumatic stress disorder, refugees, traits