Coping Flexibility Predicts Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and Depression in Human Rights Advocates

Rebecca Rodin, George Bonanno, Sarah Knuckey, Margaret Satterthwaite, Roland Hart, Amy Joscelyne, Richard Bryant and Adam Brown, International Journal of Mental Health (2017)

This empirical study of 346 human rights advocates found that greater “coping flexibility,” was associated with lower levels of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Major Depressive Disorder subsequent to trauma exposure. Coping flexibility is understood as the ability to employ different coping styles in response to trauma exposure, such as focusing on the experience of traumatic event, and high levels of “forward-focused thoughts” or optimism. The study points to the need for further longitudinal studies to understand how the potential negative mental health impacts of human rights work can be mitigated by increasing coping flexibility.