Abstract:

Post-traumatic growth is a term used to describe the positive changes experienced by individuals as a result of struggling with highly stressful life crises. There are different areas where post-traumatic growth is experienced and the growth in these areas may occur in different ways in different individuals. Post-traumatic growth is gathered under three main groups as in the self-perception, relationships and life philosophy of the individual. The number of the researches, which draw attention to the post tarumatic growth levels of individuals exposed to difficult life events, is increasing day by day. Thus, the possibility of gaining positive results from traumatic life events instead of seeing oneself only as a victim can also be mentioned. This research is very important in terms of moderating individuals' perspectives on the concept of trauma as well as encouraging them to struggle with traumatic life events more strongly. The psychoeducation program, which will be developed within the scope of this research, has a preventive and protective characteristics that enables individuals to effectively cope with the consequences of the traumatic experiences they have encountered or may encounter in their lives. In this research, a psychoeducation program was prepared to improve the post-traumatic growth levels of university students and its effect on post-traumatic growth levels of psychological counseling and guidance department students was examined. The study group consists of the volunteer students studying Guidance and Psychological Counseling at Ondokuz Mayıs University in 2018-2019 academic year. Pretest-Posttest Monitoring Model with Control Group was used as the research design. 6 students constituted the experimental group. The 10-session psychoeducation program was applied to the students in the experimental group. The post-traumatic growth levels of the students were measured with "Post-traumatic Growth Inventory". Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test was used in the analysis of the data. The findings obtained as a result of the research show that the Post-traumatic Growth Psychoeducation Program is effective in increasing post-traumatic growth levels of university students.

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