The Role of Recovery Capital in Growth from Trauma

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Background

The purpose of this Research Topic is to explore the role of recovery capital among trauma survivors. The aim is to contribute to the understanding of factors that promote adaptive coping with trauma experience and posttraumatic growth.

In 1999 and 2001, Granfield and Cloud proposed the term recovery capital (RC) to denote the internal and external resources that enable individuals to initiate and sustain long-term addiction recovery. RC includes personality traits and attitudes (e.g., hope, confidence, and gratitude), material resources (clothing, food, and shelter), and relationships (social bonds), which can be accessed to initiate and sustain recovery. People with greater RC are better placed than those with less RC to overcome problems of substance misuse. In 2008, Cloud and Granfield identified four components of RC that govern the process of recovery: cultural capital, or the values and beliefs associated with cultural group membership; physical capital, including financial assets and status, especially housing and shelter, clothing, and food; human capital, which comprises the acquired and inherited traits, such as knowledge, skills, and mental health; and social capital, which includes close, especially family, relationships that are supportive of recovery efforts. These four components of RC provide a comprehensive framework for understanding the wide range of resources that can benefit the effort to overcome substance misuse.

Although RC was conceptualized as the personal and social resources necessary for overcoming substance misuse, it is reasonable that it may also be applicable in trauma recovery. Indeed, studies have shown a strong relationship between trauma-related distress and substance abuse. Furthermore, the use of substances may be an attempt to cope with the distressing effects of trauma.

Like addiction, trauma is a complex, multifaceted experience that affects all aspects of the person – mind, body, and spirit – and leads to long-term consequences. Trauma patients experience the loss of diverse resources after injury, and interventions are required to preserve resources. Like recovery capital, the conservation of resources (COR) model focuses on the role of loss of resources in producing stress and proposes that individuals strive to build resources.

We would like to welcome submissions to compile a first collection of research on recovery capital and trauma recovery.

We encourage researchers to contribute:
- Original studies, reviews, meta-analyses, theories and clinical case studies focusing on recovery capital and posttraumatic growth including, but not limited to, cultural, physical, personal and social resources for coping with trauma;
- Quantitative research that might include the use of the Assessment of Recovery Capital, an instrument that maps levels of RC at different stages of the individual’s recovery process;
- Qualitative research focusing on individual character strengths such as hope, forgiveness, spirituality, self-compassion, and gratitude, as additional components of recovery capital.

Keywords: Recovery capital, trauma, PTSD, posttraumatic growth, trauma coping strategies

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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