Patterns of traumatic events and its relations with posttraumatic growth and religiosity in Iranian college students

Traumatic events and psychological damage are common. Identifying different types of traumatic events contributes to the development of psychopathology and can be very helpful in macroeducational and treatment planners. The current study extracted the patterns (overlap) of different traumatic events that Iranian college students commonly experience, with the aim of understanding their association with posttraumatic growth (PTG) and religiosity.

Four hundred and sixty‑six students from Kerman universities completed a cross‑sectional survey about religion, and questions about PTG and traumatic events have experienced in the past 5 years. The latent class analysis (LCA) was used for extracting patterns of traumatic events, and the one‑way ANOVA test was used to compare PTG and religiosity across these classes in Iranian college students.

The LCA revealed that a three‑class solution had an adequate relative and absolute fit. The three classes were labeled and characterized as multiple‑traumatic events (2.9%), intermediate‑traumatic events (31.1%), and low‑traumatic events (66.0%). In ANOVA results for PTG and Duke University Religion Index (DUREL) domains across classes, individuals in the multiple‑traumatic classes had the lowest score of PTG and DUREL domains.

Although the current study showed the relative frequency of multiple‑traumatic events in Iranian students is low, individuals categorized in this class had the lowest PTG, and these findings reveal the necessitation of planning and interventions for PTG.