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Featured researches published by Roxane Cohen Silver.


Journal of Personality and Social Psychology | 2010

Whatever Does Not Kill Us: Cumulative Lifetime Adversity, Vulnerability, and Resilience

Mark D. Seery; E. Alison Holman; Roxane Cohen Silver

Exposure to adverse life events typically predicts subsequent negative effects on mental health and well-being, such that more adversity predicts worse outcomes. However, adverse experiences may also foster subsequent resilience, with resulting advantages for mental health and well-being. In a multiyear longitudinal study of a national sample, people with a history of some lifetime adversity reported better mental health and well-being outcomes than not only people with a high history of adversity but also than people with no history of adversity. Specifically, U-shaped quadratic relationships indicated that a history of some but nonzero lifetime adversity predicted relatively lower global distress, lower self-rated functional impairment, fewer posttraumatic stress symptoms, and higher life satisfaction over time. Furthermore, people with some prior lifetime adversity were the least affected by recent adverse events. These results suggest that, in moderation, whatever does not kill us may indeed make us stronger.


Death Studies | 2000

Searching for meaning in loss: are clinical assumptions correct.

Christopher G. Davis; Camille B. Wortman; Darrin R. Lehman; Roxane Cohen Silver

Three assumptions guiding research and clinical intervention strategies for people coping with sudden, traumatic loss are that (a) people confronting such losses inevitably search for meaning, (b) over time most are able to find meaning and put the issue aside, and (c) finding meaning is critical for adjustment or healing. We review existing empirical research that addresses these assumptions and present evidence from a study of 124 parents coping with the death of their infant and a study of 93 adults coping with the loss of their spouse or child to a motor vehicle accident. Results of these studies indicate that (a) a significant subset of individuals do not search for meaning and yet appear relatively well-adjusted to their loss; (b) less than half of the respondents in each of these samples report finding any meaning in their loss, even more than a year after the event; and (c) those who find meaning, although better adjusted than those who search but are unable to find meaning, do not put the issue of meaning aside and move on. Rather, they continue to pursue the issue of meaning as fervently as those who search but do not find meaning. Implications for both research and clinical intervention are discussed.Three assumptions guiding research and clinical intervention strategies for people coping with sudden, traumatic loss are that (a) people confronting such losses inevitably search for meaning, (b) over time most are able to find meaning and put the issue aside, and (c) finding meaning is critical for adjustment or healing. We review existing empirical research that addresses these assumptions and present evidence from a study of 124 parents coping with the death of their infant and a study of 93 adults coping with the loss of their spouse or child to a motor vehicle accident. Results of these studies indicate that (a) a significant subset of individuals do not search for meaning and yet appear relatively well-adjusted to their loss; (b) less than half of the respondents in each of these samples report finding any meaning in their loss, even more than a year after the event; and (c) those who find meaning, although better adjusted than those who search but are unable to find meaning, do not put the issue of meaning aside and move on. Rather, they continue to pursue the issue of meaning as fervently as those who search but do not find meaning. Implications for both research and clinical intervention are discussed.


Journal of Personality and Social Psychology | 1998

Getting "stuck" in the past: Temporal orientation and coping with trauma

E. Alison Holman; Roxane Cohen Silver

The relations between temporal orientation and long-term psychological distress were studied cross-sectionally and longitudinally in 3 samples of traumatized individuals: adult victims of childhood incest, Vietnam War veterans, and residents of 2 southern California communities devastated by fire. Results indicated that a past temporal orientation--focusing attention on prior life experiences--was associated with elevated levels of distress long after the trauma had passed, even when controlling for the degree of rumination reported. Temporal disintegration at the time of the trauma--whereby the present moment becomes isolated from the continuity of past and future time--was associated with a high degree of past temporal orientation over time and subsequent distress. Temporal disintegration was highest among individuals who had experienced the most severe loss, had previously experienced chronic trauma, and had had their identities threatened by their traumatic experience.


Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin | 1995

The Undoing of Traumatic Life Events

Christopher G. Davis; Darrin R. Lehman; Camille B. Wortman; Roxane Cohen Silver; Suzanne C. Thompson

Counterfactuals generated by victims of traumatic events were examined to elucidate their significance for the coping process. In Study 1, respondents were interviewed 4-7 years after the loss of their spouse or child in a motor vehicle accident. In Study 2, respondents were interviewed at 3 weeks and 18 months following the death of their child from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Across both studies, (a) counterfactuals were commonly reported; (b) the focus of counterfactuals was typically on ones own (in)actions, rather than on the behavior of others; (c) the more frequently respondents were undoing the event, the more distress they reported; and (d) this relation held after controlling for more general ruminations. These field studies demonstrate that even in situations that lack the highly mutable circumstances described in scenario research, people coping with traumatic events appear unhindered in their ability to generate counterfactuals. Theoretical implications, with an emphasis on field studies of undoing, are discussed.


Archive | 2001

The myths of coping with loss revisited.

Camille B. Wortman; Roxane Cohen Silver

In a well-publicized legal case in Arizona, John Henry Knapp was convicted of the murder of his two young daughters, who died in a fire that destroyed their one-bedroom trailer. The principal evidence offered against Knapp was that immediately after the fire, he was outwardly calm and talkative and showed no overt display of distress. He was ultimately sentenced to death and remained in prison for 13 years. At that point, new evidence emerged about the origin of the fire that exonerated Knapp, and he was released (Brill, 1983). As this example illustrates, societal beliefs about the grieving process can exert a powerful influence on how bereaved individuals are treated. For the past two decades, we have attempted to address the following question: Are there certain beliefs or assumptions about how people should react to the loss of a loved one that are prevalent in Western culture? To determine whether such assumptions exist, we reviewed a number of theoretical models of reactions to loss, such as Freud’s (191711957) grief work perspective and Bowlby’s (1980) early attachment model of grief (see also Bonanno 61 Kaltman, 1999). We also examined books and articles written by and for clinicians and other health care providers that describe how


Archive | 1993

Handbook of bereavement: The meaning of loss and adjustment to bereavement

Camille B. Wortman; Roxane Cohen Silver; Ronald C. Kessler

In this chapter we provide an overview of our program of research on how people cope with loss. Most of this research has focused on bereavement (see Wortman & Silver, 1987, 1989, 1990, for reviews), although we have studied other types of loss as well, including physical disability (Bulman & Wortman, 1977; Silver, 1982), criminal victimization (Coates, Wortman, & Abbey, 1979), and incest (Silver, Boon, & Stones, 1983). We have had a special interest in understanding the impact of sudden, irrevocable losses - that is, events that involve permanent change and over which one has little, if any, control. Such losses can challenge peoples beliefs and assumptions about themselves and their world (Janoff-Bulman & Frieze, 1983; Wortman, 1983) and disrupt their hopes and dreams for the future (Silver & Wortman, 1980). Our goals in this work are to clarify the processes through which people try to come to terms with the inexplicable events in their lives (Tait & Silver, 1989) and to understand the theoretical mechanisms through which such events can have deleterious effects on subsequent health and functioning (Kessler, Price, & Wortman, 1985). We begin this chapter by tracing the development of theoretical ideas that we have employed in studying these events. In developing a conceptual framework for this research, we drew from two very different theoretical approaches: (1) the so-called stage models of grief, which represent the most influential theoretical approaches to the study of grief and loss (e.g., Bowlby, 1961, 1973, 1980/1981), and (2) the stress and coping approach, which has been influential in the study of life events more generally (e.g., Kessler et al., 1985).


Archives of General Psychiatry | 2008

Terrorism, Acute Stress, and Cardiovascular Health: A 3-Year National Study Following the September 11th Attacks

E. Alison Holman; Roxane Cohen Silver; Michael J. Poulin; Judith P. Andersen; Virginia Gil-Rivas; Daniel N. McIntosh

CONTEXT The terrorist attacks of 9/11 (September 11, 2001) present an unusual opportunity to examine prospectively the physical health impact of extreme stress in a national sample. OBJECTIVE To examine the degree to which acute stress reactions to the 9/11 terrorist attacks predict cardiovascular outcomes in a national probability sample over the subsequent 3 years. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS A national probability sample of 2729 adults (78.1% participation rate), 95.0% of whom had completed a health survey before 9/11 (final health sample, 2592), completed a Web-based assessment of acute stress responses approximately 9 to 14 days after the terrorist attacks. Follow-up health surveys reassessed physician-diagnosed cardiovascular ailments 1 (n = 1923, 84.3% participation rate), 2 (n = 1576, 74.2% participation rate), and 3 (n = 1950, 78.9% participation rate) years following the attacks. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Reports of physician-diagnosed cardiovascular ailments over the 3 years following the attacks. RESULTS Acute stress responses to the 9/11 attacks were associated with a 53% increased incidence of cardiovascular ailments over the 3 subsequent years, even after adjusting for pre-9/11 cardiovascular and mental health status, degree of exposure to the attacks, cardiovascular risk factors (ie, smoking, body mass index, and number of endocrine ailments), total number of physical health ailments, somatization, and demographics. Individuals reporting high levels of acute stress immediately following the attacks reported an increased incidence of physician-diagnosed hypertension (rate ratios, 2.15 at 1 year and 1.75 at 2 years) and heart problems (rate ratios, 2.98 at 1 year and 3.12 at 2 years) over 2 years. Among individuals reporting ongoing worry about terrorism post-9/11, high 9/11-related acute stress symptoms predicted increased risk of physician-diagnosed heart problems 2 to 3 years following the attacks (rate ratios, 4.67 at 2 years and 3.22 at 3 years). CONCLUSION Using health data collected before 9/11 as a baseline, acute stress response to the terrorist attacks predicted increased reports of physician-diagnosed cardiovascular ailments over 3 years following the attacks.


Journal of Personality and Social Psychology | 1990

Reconsidering the attribution-adjustment relation following a major negative event : coping with the loss of a child

Geraldine Downey; Roxane Cohen Silver; Camille B. Wortman

Field studies have not yet conclusively established how attributions affect adjustment to unanticipated traumatic events. This may be due, in part, to the adoption of several untested assumptions in most prior research. It has usually been assumed that attributional issues are important to people who experience a traumatic event, that such concern is adaptive, and that specific attributions (e.g., self-blame) influence subsequent adjustment. These assumptions were tested with longitudinal data collected over 18 months from 124 parents whose child died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. By 3 weeks postloss, 45% of parents were not concerned with attributional issues. These parents were less distressed and less likely to blame themselves or others for the death. Longitudinal analyses did not support the assumption that attributions influence subsequent adjustment. Rather, attributions to onself or others appear to be symptomatic of distress.


Social Science & Medicine | 2012

Protective factors and predictors of vulnerability to chronic stress: A comparative study of 4 communities after 7 years of continuous rocket fire

Marc Gelkopf; Rony Berger; Avraham Bleich; Roxane Cohen Silver

Many communities across the world are chronically exposed to extreme violence. Responses of residents from a city and rural community in Southern Israel, both exposed to 7 years of daily mortar fire, were compared to residents from demographically, socio-economically and geographically comparable non-exposed control samples to examine protective factors and predictors of vulnerability to chronic war-related attacks. Samples from a highly exposed city (Sderot) and a highly exposed rural community region (Otef Aza), along with a demographically comparable comparison non-exposed city (Ofakim) and non-exposed rural community region (Hevel Lachish), were obtained in 2007 using Random Digit Dialing. In total, 740 individuals (81.8% participation rate) were interviewed about trauma exposure, mental health, functioning and health care utilization. In the highly exposed city of Sderot, 97.8% of residents had been in close proximity to falling rockets; in the highly exposed rural community region of Otef Aza, 95.5% were similarly exposed. Despite exposure to chronic rocket attacks, residents of Otef Aza evidenced little symptomatology: only one person (1.5%) reported symptoms consistent with probable posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and functioning levels did not differ from those of non-exposed communities. In contrast, posttraumatic stress (PTS), distress, functional impairment and health care utilization were substantially higher in the highly exposed city of Sderot than the other three communities. Lack of resources was associated with increased vulnerability among city residents; predictors of PTS across all samples included being female, older, directly exposed to rockets, history of trauma, suffering economic loss, and lacking social support. Increased community solidarity, sense of belonging and confidence in authorities may have served a protective function for residents of rural communities, despite the chronic attacks to which they were exposed.


Psychological Science | 2013

Mental- and Physical-Health Effects of Acute Exposure to Media Images of the September 11, 2001, Attacks and the Iraq War

Roxane Cohen Silver; E. Alison Holman; Judith P. Andersen; Michael J. Poulin; Daniel N. McIntosh; Virginia Gil-Rivas

Millions of people witnessed early, repeated television coverage of the September 11 (9/11), 2001, terrorist attacks and were subsequently exposed to graphic media images of the Iraq War. In the present study, we examined psychological- and physical-health impacts of exposure to these collective traumas. A U.S. national sample (N = 2,189) completed Web-based surveys 1 to 3 weeks after 9/11; a subsample (n = 1,322) also completed surveys at the initiation of the Iraq War. These surveys measured media exposure and acute stress responses. Posttraumatic stress symptoms related to 9/11 and physician-diagnosed health ailments were assessed annually for 3 years. Early 9/11- and Iraq War–related television exposure and frequency of exposure to war images predicted increased posttraumatic stress symptoms 2 to 3 years after 9/11. Exposure to 4 or more hr daily of early 9/11-related television and cumulative acute stress predicted increased incidence of health ailments 2 to 3 years later. These findings suggest that exposure to graphic media images may result in physical and psychological effects previously assumed to require direct trauma exposure.

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E. Alison Holman

University of South Florida

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Virginia Gil-Rivas

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

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Mark D. Seery

State University of New York System

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Barry Goff

University of Connecticut

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