Social support and vicarious posttraumatic growth among psychological hotline counselors during COVID-19: the role of resilience and cognitive reappraisal

Abstract

ABSTRACTBackground The COVID-19 pandemic is a serious threat to people's lives and mental health. As a key worker providing psychological assistance services, the purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between social support and vicarious posttraumatic growth of psychological hotline counselors during COVID-19 and its mechanism.Methods A questionnaire survey was conducted among 241 psychological hotline counselors. Path analysis was conducted through structural equation modeling.Results The direct path from social support to vicarious posttraumatic growth of psychological hotline counselors was not significant, but the indirect path between them was significant. Social support can influence vicarious posttraumatic growth of psychological hotline counselors through the mediating effects of resilience and cognitive reappraisal as well as the chain mediating effects of these two factors.Conclusions Social support does not directly stimulate vicarious posttraumatic growth in psychological hotline counselors, but social support can influence counselors' vicarious posttraumatic growth through the role of resilience, cognitive reappraisal, and the chain-mediated effects of psychological resilience and cognitive reappraisal. This encourages hotline counselors to be intentional about applying resources to balance the effects of trauma work on them as they face their clinical work.

Keywords

• Psychological hotline counselors
• social support
• resilience
• cognitive reappraisal
• vicarious posttraumatic growth