“It Has Informed My Entire Life”: Event Centrality, Vicarious Traumatization, and Vicarious Post-Traumatic Growth in Loved Ones Indirectly Exposed to Interpersonal Trauma

It is well-known that interpersonal traumatic events can impact the physical and mental health of those indirectly exposed to the events. Less studied are populations of loved ones who have been indirectly exposed to interpersonal trauma. My dissertation first aimed to synthesize the literature related to vicarious traumatization (VT), vicarious posttraumatic growth (VPTG), and event centrality in loved ones indirectly exposed to interpersonal trauma through a scoping review. The Joanna Briggs Institute methodology was used for Study 1. Inclusion criteria included (a) participants were indirectly exposed to the interpersonal trauma of a loved one in adulthood, (b) discussion of VT, VPTG, event centrality, or related terms, (c) published peer-reviewed empirical journal articles, and (d) available in English. We used a three-step search strategy to find relevant articles. Keywords found from the first two steps were entered into PsychINFO, PsycArticles, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science databases. Reference lists of the included articles were also examined. The identified articles were then screened using the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Twenty-eight articles met inclusion and exclusion criteria. Twenty-six articles referenced VT or related terms, one referenced VPTG, and one referenced vicarious trauma keywords. No articles referenced event centrality. The results of this study led to the second aim for this dissertation: to understand parents' process of vicarious event centrality for their child's interpersonal traumatic event post-disclosure, as this was a knowledge gap in the literature. Participants in Study 2 were 17 primary caregivers (14 maternal caregivers, 3 paternal caregivers) of 27 victims of child interpersonal trauma (14 males, 13 females) located in Canada. The age of participants ranged from 35 to 75 years (average = 54.5 years) and majority self-identified as Caucasian (70.6%). Grounded theory (GT) was used to analyze the data collected from participant interviews. The resulting model was labelled Vicarious Event Centralization and Decentralization, indicating that parents center their child’s interpersonal trauma across many areas of their lives, which orients them to focus on protecting and healing the child. After the child’s functioning improves, parents are then able to reorient to life beyond the trauma, representing decentralization. The GT consists of three phases, Centralization, Decentralization Gateway, and Decentralization. These results illustrate that parents’ centralization of the trauma may be an adaptive mechanism that promotes child recovery, which in turn allows parents to begin to decentralize the trauma and move towards recovery. This series of studies supports that loved ones are affected by indirect interpersonal trauma exposure in a myriad of ways and require unique services to address their needs. These studies can help practitioners understand the post-trauma experience for loved ones and target areas likely to increase recovery.

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