Women’s Journeys to Posttraumatic Growth: A Guide for the Helping Professions and Women Who Have Experienced Trauma

This accessible book draws on research around women’s experiences to illustrate and explore the concept of posttraumatic growth, emphasizing practice implications for healthcare professionals and strategies for fostering posttraumatic growth.

Including the voices of women, in their own words, Women’s Journeys to Posttraumatic Growth explains the differences between post-traumatic stress disorder and posttraumatic growth and presents the theoretical framework of posttraumatic growth. It synthesizes relevant international research and introduces data from four new qualitative research studies on posttraumatic growth in women who have experienced the death of a spouse or longtime partner, death of a child, a close brush with death, and intimate partner abuse. The book develops clinical and nursing practice implications for healthcare professionals and explores current self-help and professional therapeutic strategies to foster posttraumatic growth.

Women’s Journeys to Posttraumatic Growth is an invaluable guide for health and social care practitioners, as well as students and researchers with an interest in trauma, abuse, bereavement and loss, and women’s healthcare.

Mary Ellen Doherty is professor of nursing at Western Connecticut State University, USA. Most of her career has been spent in clinical practice as a certified nurse midwife; she has delivered over 2,000 babies in her midwifery career. She was founder and president of Concord Midwifery Associates with delivery privileges at Emerson Hospital in Concord, Massachusetts. She is an active researcher on women’s health topics and midwifery care. Dr. Doherty was the 2012 recipient of the Norton Mezvinsky Award for Excellence in Research. She is a fellow of the American College of Nurse-Midwives.

Elizabeth Scannell-Desch is retired associate dean at Rutgers University, School of Nursing, Camden, USA. She holds the tenured rank of professor. Elizabeth retired from the U.S. Air Force (Nurse Corps) in 1997, after serving on active duty for 25 years. Dr. Scannell-Desch attained the rank of colonel, and her last assignment was at the Pentagon. Elizabeth was a visiting professor at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Cluj-Napoka, Romania. Her program of research has focused on women’s health issues and military nursing. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing.