Re "A New Focus on the 'Post' in Post-Traumatic Stress" (Mind, Dec. 25): Social contexts are well-established predictors of adjustment following trauma.
We also found that the social tactics (serial and investiture) were the strongest predictors of adjustment outcomes.
Pain duration, age, and pain severity differed among the groups and were entered as covariates in hierarchical regression analyses designed to identify predictors of adjustment and pain coping.
There were three significant predictors of adjustment disorders: gender, education, and organizational commitment.
In previous studies, poverty and high levels of stressful life events associated with maternal depression were also significant predictors of adjustment problems in children [ 6].
For example, Stanton and colleagues [ 27] investigated hope and coping strategies as predictors of adjustment among 85 women one year after a diagnosis of breast cancer and reported that high-hope women adopting problem-focused coping strategies adjusted better.
Attitudes of family members towards schizophrenics is an independent predictor of social adjustment in these individuals [ 5].
Personal control over life in general, or sense of mastery, will be measured with the Mastery Scale [ 53], which has shown to be a predictor of psychological adjustment in the year following a breast cancer diagnosis [ 13, 54].
Both of these issues may possibly have had some impact on the survey outcome, particularly as time from diagnosis has been shown to be a significant predictor of maladaptive adjustment to PCa.
With respect to the latter outcomes, same evidence suggests that expressive writing is effective in enhancing positive growth from trauma over time [ 29] and a body of research has shown that awareness of the benefits of adverse events and circumstances is an important predictor of successful adjustment [ 30- 32].
