Psychosocial factors refer to stimuli that impact an individual socially or psychologically. They entail multidimensional constructs made up of numerous realms, including cognitive behavioral reactions, social factors, and mood status. On the other hand, trauma refers to psychological impairment to the mind occurring due to a distressing situation or occurrence. It is often due to overwhelming stress that goes beyond one’s ability to handle the situation. Often it integrates emotional feelings with the particular event. There are three main types of trauma, including complex trauma, chronic trauma, and acute trauma. Acute trauma is due to one event while chronic trauma occurs in the case an incident takes longer, such as abuse. Complex trauma is the experience of various traumatic occurrences, often invasive.
Whichever the type of trauma, there are significant and outstanding reactions to every trauma. They may include agitation, sadness, exhaustion, confusion, dissociation, and anxiety. Others may entail numbness, blunted affect, and physical arousal ( Zoladz & Diamond 2016) . According to the psychosocial hypothesis, psychosocial factors play a significant role in the general well-being of one’s health ( Tay & Silove, 2017) . Psychosocial factors such as hostility, hopelessness, depression, and stress have a direct impact on one’s response to trauma response. Thus psychosocial factors that include aspects to do with psychological traits and mental states have a negative effect on trauma response ( Hassan et al., 2016) . They have the dominant influence to influence one’s health, physically or mentally by way of psychosocial mechanism.
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Psychosocial Stress
Psychosocial stress entails one’s physiological and emotional reactions towards a stressful event and often demands going beyond one’s ability to cope. Stress is directly linked to a traumatic response. If and when faced with a difficult situation, one may yell, curse, or hit themselves on the wall. It is a way in which the mind is reacting to a difficult situation. Stress is often associated with distress, anxiety, and depressive moods. Tay and Silove, (2017) argued that w hen one is faced with a very complicated situation such as losing a loved one, they are bound to be filled with remorse, overwhelming distress, and sadness in addition to anxiety and depressive feelings. These mood swings are directly associated with response to the trauma or sad event that has just occurred. While assessing psychological trauma responses, it is also essential to evaluate psychosocial factors such as stress-related complications.
Cognitive Behavioral Responses
Trauma responses may lead one to lose control, lower one’s self-esteem, and bring forth some level of self-efficacy. According to Hassan et al., (2016) these are psychosocial factors under cognitive-behavioral reactions that have a direct impact on how one responds to a traumatic event. For example, Zoladz and Diamond (2016) argued that an individual who has been involved in a traumatic accident may suffer from low self-esteem, especially if he or she suffered visible physical injuries such as losing an arm or one’s leg. The traumatic response may involve self-doubt, shame, social withdrawal, blame, exaggeration, and pessimism. In responding to the traumatic event, the victim may show various signs of cognitive complexities that arise from psychosocial factors. For example, the victim may continuously blame someone else to avoid the reality or truth behind the unfortunate event maybe.
Social Factors
Responses towards a traumatic event may take the form of social dimensions. These include one’s physical attributes, ethnicity, relationships, status, personal roles, and family, among others. They entail psychosocial factors within the social framework. For example, some responses towards trauma may incline an individual to doubt their societal roles, relationship with others, and maybe socioeconomic status ( Tsujiuchi et al., 2016) . The factors entail the exact symptoms one may experience after a traumatic event. For example, losing elections is a traumatic event and may impact negatively on an individual. Common psychological responses toward such an incident include various questions on one’s role or socioeconomic status within the society ( Tay & Silove, 2017) . As a psychosocial factor, social factors play a critical role one’s response towards a traumatic response. It thus shows a significant pattern between the two, for example, social factors such as the relationship with others will play a critical role in the response towards the trauma response.
Social Environment
One’s social environment has an essential contributor to mental health. Aspects of a negative social environment are bound to worsen an individual’s trauma response. For example, according to Sayed, Iacoviello and Charney, (2015) an individual who has just lost a close relative in a road accident may find coping with the situation very difficult if they find themselves in a hostile or unwelcoming social environment. The exposure may make the trauma response worse, meaning that the environment may cause the depression levels worse, trigger hopelessness or hostility towards others ( Hassan et al., 2016) . Thus, one’s social environment and trauma response signs have similar patterns.
Mental Status
According to Zoladz and Diamond (2016) o ne’s mental status is bound to affect how they react towards traumatic response. For example, a healthy mind may find strategies for coping with traumatic events without any far-reaching effect on their well-being. However, according to Hahn et al, (2016) a psychological imbalance mind may find dealing with a traumatic response such as depression very challenging. Mental status and one’s ability to respond to trauma effectively is directly related to how healthy they are in their minds ( Hahn et al., 2016) . For example, a healthy and well-rounded mind can cope well with traumatic responses such as confusion. However, an unhealthy mind may find it very difficult to acknowledge the presence of a psychological imbalance in their lives.
Conclusion
Psychosocial factors have a substantial impact and influence on how an individual may respond to trauma. The psychosocial factors associated with trauma response include mental status, cognitive behavior response, social factors, psychosocial stress, and social environment. An individual can nurture these factors even minus or before the trauma. From the strong relationship between psychosocial factors and trauma response, it is essential to treat both the psychological reactions and psychosocial factors. The reasoning is attributed to the strong impact and influence psychosocial factors have on trauma response. Failure to acknowledge the presence and influence of psychosocial factors on trauma response may lead to inadequate trauma examination and evaluation during treatment. A systematic assessment will no doubt help treat the two wholly towards complete recovery. There lies a very slight difference between psychosocial factors and trauma response.
References
Hahn, E. E., Hays, R. D., Kahn, K. L., Litwin, M. S., & Ganz, P. A. (2015). Post ‐ traumatic stress symptoms in cancer survivors: relationship to the impact of cancer scale and other associated risk factors. Psycho ‐ Oncology , 24 (6), 643-652. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4400255/
Hassan, G., Ventevogel, P., Jefee-Bahloul, H., Barkil-Oteo, A., & Kirmayer, L. J. (2016). Mental health and psychosocial wellbeing of Syrians affected by armed conflict. Epidemiology and psychiatric sciences , 25 (2), 129-141.
Sayed, S., Iacoviello, B. M., & Charney, D. S. (2015). Risk factors for the development of psychopathology following trauma. Current psychiatry reports , 17 (8), 70.
Tay, A. K., & Silove, D. (2017). The ADAPT model: bridging the gap between psychosocial and individual responses to mass violence and refugee trauma. Epidemiology and psychiatric sciences , 26 (2), 142-145.
Tsujiuchi, T., Yamaguchi, M., Masuda, K., Tsuchida, M., Inomata, T., Kumano, H., ... & Mollica, R. F. (2016). High prevalence of post-traumatic stress symptoms in relation to social factors in affected population one year after the Fukushima nuclear disaster. PloS one , 11 (3), e0151807. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0151807
Zoladz, P. R., & Diamond, D. (2016). Psychosocial predator stress model of PTSD based on clinically relevant risk factors for trauma-induced psychopathology. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: From Neurobiology to Treatment , 125 , 125-143. https://www.onu.edu/files/zoladz_diamond_proofs.pdf
