The investigation of the mediator role of post-traumatic cognitions and perceived social support in the relationship of traumatic event type and posttraumatic stress disorders symptoms in university students

Aim of the study is to examine the mediator roles of posttraumatic cognitions and perceived social support between the trauma type (human-induced vs. nature-induced) and posttraumatic stress symptoms. The study was conducted with the participation of 216 female (70%), 91 male (30%) university students (307 in total) who were above 18 and has at least one traumatic experience. "Demographic Information Form", Turkish forms of "The Posttraumatic Diagnostic Scale", "Posttraumatic Cognitions Inventory" and "The Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support" were conducted for data gathering. The relation between the variables was analyzed by correlation analysis. MANOVA was carried out to investigate the differences of the variables according to trauma type and lastly mediator analysis was conducted. In this study, posttraumatic cognitions refer to negative cognitions include negative cognitions about self, negative cognitions about world and self-blame subgroups. According to results, there is a positive relationship between posttraumatic stress symptoms and posttraumatic cognitions, but negative relationship exists between posttraumatic stress symptoms and perceived social support and between posttraumatic cognitions and perceived social support. After the MANOVA analysis, it is shown that trauma type has no effect on posttraumatic stress symptoms and perceived social support but effect of trauma type on posttraumatic cognitions are statistically significant which means that effect of human-induced trauma on posttraumatic cognitions is higher than nature-induced traumatic events. There is no significant relation between trauma type and posttraumatic stress symptoms but as Hayes (2009) recommended, mediator analysis was conducted. Results showed that the posttraumatic cognitions variable has an indirect effect on the relation between human-induced traumas and posttraumatic stress symptoms. Also, if the trauma type is human-induced trauma, then the traumatic experience affects the posttraumatic cognitions which later affect the perceived social support. But it is shown that the perceived social support has not a mediator effect and total effect of trauma type on posttraumatic stress symptoms is not significant. Results were discussed according to related literature. Trauma type may be an important variable while studying posttraumatic cognitions. Also, effect path of the trauma type on perceived social support was also shown in this study. Keywords Trauma Type, Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms, Posttraumatic Cognitions, Perceived Social Support