Explaining Post-Traumatic Growth: Thematic Synthesis of Qualitative Research

The present study aimed at employing a thematic synthesis approach to respond to this fundamental question: what is the post-traumatic growth process? The current study was a thematic synthesis of qualitative papers on post traumatic growth. From 50 Studies about post-traumatic growth from 2007 to 2018, 18 papers met the inclusion criteria for Systematic review. Papers were analyzed based on Thomas and Harden's thematic synthesis approach that includes three steps: free encoding of preliminary studies findings, organizing free codes into descriptive themes, and developing analytical topics using descriptive themes.  In total, after analyzing the results of the research, three main themes and 7 categories were obtained. The first theme was reaction to  trauma with the category of primary emotions; the second theme was the requirements to begin the PTG with two categories including time and reality comprehension; and the third theme was the emergence of post-traumatic growth with four categories including Individual, social, psychological, and spiritual developments. According to the study findings it can be concluded that people show different emotions after expousure to traumatic events and after some time with processing the events they experience growth in different aspects of their lives.