title: Mediating effects of forgiveness and emotion-focused coping on post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms caused by physical injury and perceived threat.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The purpose of this study was to develop and test a model (including cognitive appraisal, coping strategy, and forgiveness variables) predicting post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in 127 adults who were involved in traffic accidents.
  
  
  METHODS
  Participants were recruited from the inpatient and outpatient departments of three urban hospitals in South Korea. We utilized the path analysis to identify the best fitting model to our data.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Path analysis showed that the baseline model compared with an alternative model was more appropriate for our data. Our results indicated that the severity of physical injury was directly related to the participants' perceived threat. The perceived threat had direct and indirect effects on PTSD symptoms through forgiveness and emotion-focused coping strategies. One of the significant findings was that victims' forgiveness of the person at fault for the accident reduced their PTSD symptoms. The severity of physical injury was not related directly to PTSD symptoms.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our study demonstrates that victim's forgiveness of the person at fault in a traumatic situation can be useful in helping their recovery after trauma and the forgiveness process may be applied to traffic accident situations as well as other types of interpersonal trauma.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Ilsan Paik Hospital, Inje University College of Medicine, Goyang, South Korea; Department of Psychology, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, South Korea.
authors.forename: Sung-Man
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Bae
authors.forename: Myoung-Ho
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Hyun
authors.forename: Young-Sun
authors.initials: YS
authors.lastname: Ra
mesh_terms: D000063:Accidents, Traffic; D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D061347:Forgiveness; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008960:Models, Psychological; D056910:Republic of Korea; D013313:Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Emotion-focused coping strategy; forgiveness; perceived threat; physical injury severity; post-traumatic stress disorder