Childhood traumatic experiences and happiness level of nursing students

Childhood trauma is an important problem of child health, which is widely seen in the world and in our country, affects the whole life of the individual with the traces it leaves and causes a decrease in positive emotions. The current study was conducted with a mixed research design in which quantitative and qualitative methods were used together in order to examine the childhood trauma experiences and happiness levels of nursing students. The sample of the quantitative part of the study consisted of 349 students from the Nursing Department of a university who agreed to participate in the research, and the sample of the qualitative part consisted of 25 students who participated in the first step of the research and agreed to participate in the second step. In the quantitative part of the study, the data were collected using the Personal Information Form, Childhood Trauma Questionnaire Short Form and Oxford Happiness Questionnaire Short Form, and in the qualitative part, the semi-structured interview form. In assessing the data of quantitative data, descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney U, Kruskal Wallis and Spearman correlation test were used with the SAS 9.4 package program. The quantitative data were analyzed by the thematic analysis method with the MAXQDA 2020 package program. As a result of quantitative research; In childhood, male students are physically neglected more, students with low income are more abused, students with mothers with low education levels are exposed to more physical neglect, abuse increases as the number of siblings increases, students with parents with authoritarian parenting attitudes are more vulnerable. It has been concluded that those who are traumatized more, have more psychiatric disorders in adulthood, and that childhood trauma and happiness level are related. As a result of the qualitative research, it was seen that the students had traumatic experiences such as neglect-abuse, loss of parents, war, migration, illness and starting working life at an early age. In qualitative research, 6 themes and 17 sub-themes including "Childhood Abuse", "Effects of Childhood Trauma", "Coping with Childhood Trauma", "Post-Traumatic Growth", "Future Self-Parenting Perception", "Get Stronger by Nursing Education" determined. As a result of this mixed method research, it was seen that the participants had many childhood traumatic experiences, unlike the neglect-abuse cases, the traumatic experience had reflections on the adulthood, and the concepts were clarified from a nursing point of view. Key Worlds: Childhood Abuse, Happiness, Nursing Students, Mixed Method