From Vulnerability to Growth: Positive and Negative Effects of Stressful Life Events

By John A. Updegraff, Shelley E. Taylor. Loss and Trauma, 2021

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Severely stressful life events can have a substantial impact on those who experience them. For some, experience with a traumatic life event can leave them confused, withdrawn, depressed, and increasingly vulnerable to the next stressful situation that arises. The clinical literature, for example, has found various stressful life events to be risk factors for the development of depression, anxiety, and in extreme cases, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). For other individuals, a traumatic experience can serve as a catalyst for positive change, a chance to reexamine life priorities or develop strong ties with friends and family. Recent research has explored the immediate and long-term positive effects of similarly severe life events, such as cancer, bereavement, and HIV-infection, to identify the factors and processes that appear to contribute to resilience and growth. These two lines of research, however, have developed largely independent of each other and a number of questions remain to be explored in their integration. For example, do the roots of these apparently divergent patterns lie in the events themselves or in the people who experience them? Do some experiences typically lead to negative outcomes, whereas others contribute to the development of positive changes? What psychological factors appear to moderate these outcomes? How do positive outcomes, such as perceptions of stress-related growth and benefit, relate to measures of negative adjustment? To address these questions, we begin with a review of positive outcomes that have been reported in response to stressful life events, such as the perceptions of stressrelated growth and benefit and theories that help to explain these changes. We then

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Clinical Psychology

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