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TRAUMA, DISPOSITIONAL FORGIVENESS AND DEPRESSION
Andrew Scherbarth, B.S.*, Melissa Ranucci, M.S., Mark Vosvick, Ph.D. University of North Texas
*Corresponding author: Andrew Scherbarth, Department of Psychology, P.O. Box 311280, Denton, TX 76203-1280. (940) 594-3172; ascherbarth@unt.edu
Depression in people with HIV/AIDS (PLH) is common and detrimental—they suffer functional impairment, decreased motivation, and poor health. Depression is more common among PLH than the general population, even after controlling for the overlap between physical depression symptoms and HIV symptoms. Trauma symptoms include nightmares, hyperreactivity, avoidance of situations, and emotional numbing. Dispositional forgiveness is a personality trait that allows people to release negative thoughts, feelings and behaviors after hurtful experiences. Some current research ties PTSD or traumatic events to depression in PLH, but there are no studies that examine links between trauma symptoms, forgiveness, and depression among PLH. The current study included a diverse sample (n=211, 45% female, 59% African-American, 9% Latino, 73% low income, ages 19-68). We hypothesized that more traumatic symptoms (Acute Stress Disorder Screener) and less dispositional forgiveness (Heartland Forgiveness Scale) would be associated with more intense cognitive-affective symptoms of depression (CES-D). After controlling for demographic and AIDS-related medical factors, a hierarchical linear regression analysis (adjusted R2 =.41 [F(8, 202) = 19.01, p<.001]; adjusted R2-change=.27, p<.001) suggests that more HIV-related symptoms (t=2.64, p=.01), trauma-related symptoms (t=6.07, p<.001), and less dispositional forgiveness (t= -6.64, p<.001) were independently associated with a greater cognitive-affective depression scores. The implication of our study is that therapeutic interventions to identify and address symptoms of trauma, as well as to promote forgiveness of unpleasant experiences, would be associated with lower rates of depression in PLH, which would be associated with improved functionality. |