Posttraumatic growth: turning wounds into wisdom. Positive aftermath of life threatening illness. : Secondary analysis of existing data from a randomized trial.

Sammanfattning: Backround: Traumatic events have shown to have negative psychological outcomes globally. Psychological interventions such as cognitive behavioral therapy has proven to alleviate these problems and to increase the quality of life resulting in positive outcomes after traumatic events. Internet-based congnitive behavioral treatments have been shown to be as effective as face-to-face therapies and have advantages beyond languages and cultures on global scale. Objective: Aim of this study is to investigate the effect of internet-based psychological treatment on posttraumatic growth among myocardial infarction patients in Sweden. In addition to that it is aimed to investigate which role the emotional response to the stressor and social support plays on experiencing growth. Methods: Secondary analysis of existing data utilising a randomized study design. Sample size of 239 participants which were allocated in a treatment group (n=117) and in a treatment as usual (n=122) group. The main analysis was conducted applying the intention-to-treat principle with multiple imputed data as there were missing values in outcome in total. Linear regression was used for binary analysis and adjusted models were created with multiple linear regression.  Results: No effect of internet-based psychological treatment on posttraumatic growth could detected. However, signifant positive associations were indicated between emotional response to stressor and posttraumatic growth, as well as, between social support and posttraumatic growth.  Conclusions: The results alone do not support the treatment effectiveness to reach posttraumatic growth significantly. Further research is required targeting posttraumatic growth as an outcome for internet- based psychological treatment and preferably among different trauma groups.