Perceived Posttraumatic Growth and Psychological Distress Three Years After the 2023 Earthquakes in Southern Türkiye: The Moderating Roles of Self-Compassion and Resilience
Three years after the 2023 Türkiye earthquakes, this study found that posttraumatic growth coexists with persistent psychological distress and PTSD symptoms among survivors, with self-compassion and resilience serving as protective moderators that weaken the link between growth and general distress but not between growth and PTSD.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
Disasters leave deep marks on the human mind, but the story of recovery is rarely a straight line. For decades, psychologists have studied two very different reactions to trauma. On one side is post-traumatic stress, a heavy burden of fear, flashbacks, and anxiety that can linger long after the danger has passed. On the other is post-traumatic growth, a phenomenon where people report feeling stronger, more appreciative of life, or closer to others after surviving a crisis. For a long time, it was assumed that these two experiences were opposites: that as the pain of trauma faded, the growth would appear. However, recent thinking suggests the reality is more complex. It is possible for a person to feel they have grown significantly while still carrying the heavy weight of stress and sadness. Understanding how these feelings coexist, and what helps people navigate them, is crucial for anyone trying to heal after a catastrophe.
In February 2023, two massive earthquakes struck southern Türkiye, causing widespread destruction and loss of life. Three years later, a researcher named Serpil Ceylan Hoca set out to understand the long-term mental landscape of the survivors. She wanted to know if the feeling of having grown from the experience was linked to ongoing stress, and whether certain inner strengths could change that relationship. Her study focused on 280 adult survivors who had directly experienced the disaster. She asked them to describe their current state of mind using several standard tools: one to measure symptoms of post-traumatic stress, another to gauge general emotional distress like sadness and worry, and a third to measure how much they felt they had grown. She also asked about their ability to be kind to themselves, their general resilience, and the support they felt from others.
The results painted a picture that challenges the simple idea that growth equals healing. The study found that people who reported higher levels of post-traumatic growth also tended to report higher levels of both stress symptoms and general emotional distress. In other words, feeling that you have changed for the better did not mean you were free from the pain of the event. This pattern held true even after the researcher accounted for other factors, such as whether the person had lost their home, witnessed death, or had a history of mental health treatment before the earthquake. The data showed that the more a person felt they had grown, the more they also struggled with stress and sadness. This suggests that the process of finding meaning after a tragedy often happens alongside, not instead of, the struggle with trauma.
However, the study also discovered that not all survivors were affected in the same way. The researcher looked at two specific qualities: self-compassion, which is the ability to treat oneself with kindness during difficult times, and resilience, the capacity to bounce back from hardship. She found that these qualities acted as a buffer, but only for general emotional distress, not for the specific symptoms of trauma. For people with low levels of self-compassion or resilience, the link between feeling grown and feeling distressed was very strong. But for those with high levels of these qualities, the connection was much weaker. A survivor with high self-compassion could report significant growth without that growth being tied to the same high levels of sadness and anxiety seen in others. Interestingly, these inner strengths did not change the relationship between growth and the specific symptoms of post-traumatic stress, such as flashbacks or hypervigilance.
The study also highlighted the role of the environment. Losing a home and witnessing death were strongly linked to general emotional distress, suggesting that the ongoing practical and social struggles of displacement continue to weigh heavily on survivors years later. While social support and self-compassion were linked to lower overall distress, the specific trauma symptoms remained stubbornly connected to the feeling of growth. The researcher noted that her study was a snapshot in time, so it cannot prove that one feeling causes the other, but the patterns are clear. The findings suggest that for mental health professionals and communities helping survivors, the goal should not be to view growth as a sign that the work is done. Instead, they should recognize that a person can be growing and suffering at the same time. True support involves helping people build self-compassion and resilience, which can help them carry the weight of their growth without being overwhelmed by the accompanying distress.
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