Is Posttraumatic Growth Benefited from Dispositional Forgiveness? A Correlational Study among Covid-19 Bereaved Individuals

Abstract

The experience of losing loved ones due to COVID-19 pandemic may be considered different and harder, thus can be perceived as traumatic and cause prolonged grief disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder among bereaved individuals. Considering another path of the effect of trauma, previous study showed that posttraumatic growth was associated with forgiveness. This study examined the relationship between forgiveness and posttraumatic growth among COVID-19 bereaved individuals. Participants were 40 bereaved individuals who lost their parents, children, siblings, or spouses in the COVID-19 pandemic, selected using convenience sampling technique. Participants’ age ranged from 18-57 years (M= 27.98; SD= 9.934) and mostly female (M= 7.5%). The Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (21 items; α= .920) was used to measure posttraumatic growth, whereas forgiveness was measured by the Forgiveness Scale (48 items; α= .920). Data were analyzed using Pearson product-moment correlation. The results showed that forgiveness was positively related to posttraumatic growth among COVID-19 bereaved individuals (r xy= .317; p= .046) with only self-forgiveness dimension correlated significantly with posttraumatic growth (r xy= .335; p= .034). Implication of this study is discussed.