Posttraumatic growth and mindfulness among bereaved college students

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between posttraumatic growth and mindfulness among bereaved college students. A total of 168 college undergraduates who had experienced the death of a close friend or family member in the past 3 years completed an on-line administered survey. The survey consisted of measures of posttraumatic growth (Posttraumatic Growth Inventory; PTGI, Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1996); mindfulness (Mindful Attention Awareness Scale; MAAS, Brown & Ryan, 2003); impact of the event; bereavement reactions, and depressive symptoms. Participants also reported information related to bereavement (e.g., perceived closeness in closest relationship, time since death of closest relationship, and type of relationship). Additionally, in a modified version of a narrative written disclosure paradigm (Pennebaker & Beale, 1986), participants were asked to write about their deepest thoughts and feelings about their bereavement experiences. The results indicated that mindfulness as measured by the MAAS was negatively correlated with the PTGI-Personal Strength scale and the PTGI-New Possibilities scale. However, after perceived closeness to the deceased, grief-related distress, and impact of the event were taken into account, the relationship between mindfulness and PTGI-Personal Strength was not significant. Also, once ethnicity, grief-related distress, and impact of the event were taken into account, the relationship between mindfulness and PTGI-New Possibilities was no longer significant. Impact of the event was negatively correlated with mindfulness and positively correlated with posttraumatic growth. The Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC; Pennebaker, Booth, & Francis, 2007) was used to analyze content from the written narrative disclosure. Results indicated that posttraumatic growth was not associated with the LIWC Positive Emotional Total score (computed by subtracting negative emotion words from positive emotion words). Mindfulness was not associated with either causal word usage or insight word usage. Surprisingly, the PTGI-Total score was inversely related to insight word usage. An exploratory analysis revealed that mindfulness moderated the relationship between posttraumatic growth and depressive symptoms though the nature of the interaction was contrary to the hypothesis. Suggestions for future research and implications about the differing roles posttraumatic growth and mindfulness may play in the process of bereavement are discussed.