Article Summary: Post-traumatic stress and self-disclosure

Article Summary: Purves, D. G., & Erwin, P. G. (2004). Post-traumatic stress and self-disclosure. The journal of psychology, 138(1), 23-34.

Purves & Erwin (2004) The main findings were that men and women have different levels of self-disclosure. The authors established that men usually hide the emotions of happiness. Since men are unwilling to disclose the emotions of happiness, this characteristic predicts high levels of traumatic symptoms among men as found by the authors. However, women experienced greater trauma symptoms as a result of reduced willingness to disclose the fear related topics or increased willingness to express their anxiety related issues.

One of the major key concepts discussed in this article is emotional self-disclosure. The author describes emotional self-disclosure as talking about major and minor life events, sharing experiences, sharing of emotional experiences after accidents, sharing of feelings around emotional experiences. The author explains that, “self-disclosure spans a wide range of phenomena, from simple details of fact to complex personally meaningful narratives.” One way that the authors limit the concept of self-disclosure is its differing level and impact among males and females. For example, Amir, Stafford, Freshman, and Foa (1998) found that individual differences in post-trauma self-disclosure The authors used the term “express potent emotions” to add more information to the concept of emotional self-disclosure.

References

Purves, D. G., & Erwin, P. G. (2004). Post-traumatic stress and self-disclosure. The journal of psychology, 138(1), 23-34.

Agaibi, C. E., & Wilson, J. P. (2005). Trauma, PTSD, and Resilience A Review of the Literature. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 6(3), 195-216.