Psychosocial Predictors of Post-traumatic Growth in Patients after Myocardial Infarction

The present research was conducted to investigate the psychosocial predictors of post-traumatic growth in patients after myocardial infarction. A sample of 90 patients with myocardial infarction (Men = 53; Women = 37) were recruited with an age range of 45-65 years using cross-sectional research design and purposive sampling technique. Urdu translations of Big Five Inventory (Raiha, 2012; originally developed by John Srivastava, 1999), Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (Qureshi, 2011; originally developed by Zimet, Dahlem, Zimet Farley, 1988), Brief COPE (Akhtar, 2005; originally developed by Carver, 1997) and Post-traumatic Growth Inventory (Arif, 2011; originally developed by Tedeschi Calhoun,1996) were used to assess personality traits, perceived social support, coping strategies and post-traumatic growth, respectively. Post-traumatic growth was found to be positively related with personality traits of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience and negatively related with neuroticism. Post-traumatic growth and perceived social support were positively correlated with each other. Post-traumatic growth was also found to be positively related with the use of problem focused and active emotional coping and negatively related with the use of avoidant emotional coping. Moreover, personality trait of openness to experiences and high perceived social support predicted high post-traumatic growth; while, use of avoidant emotional coping predicted low post- traumatic growth. These findings provide an important insight into the phenomenon of post- traumatic growth which can be utilized for the benefit of people in enhancing and promoting positive psychological growth after experiencing heart attack.