Professor Marcin Rzeszutek, PhD
Head of the Trauma Research Laboratory,
a professor at the Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw
He is an author of many scientific publications on long-term effects of coping with various traumatic events – from adverse childhood experiences, through trauma of coping with fatal somatic disease, up to the intergenerational transmission of trauma. He is also interested in issues of post-traumatic growth (PTG), and in particular, why after traumatic events certain people experience only their “dark” side of them, in the form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), while other experience post-traumatic growth. He studies these phenomena especially in patients coping with a chronic somatic disease, i.e. HIV infection. A co-author of the website hiv.psychologia.pl/en/ dedicated to this topic.
As a Gestalt clinical psychotherapist at the “Ośrodek JA” centre and the “Nastroje Psychoterapii” office, he also empirically studies the subject of the mental health of psychotherapists, including in terms of mental and social agents protecting against professional burn-out and increasing emotional wellbeing in this profession.
Two faces of experiencing trauma: PTSD and PTG
There are many studies showing that experiencing mental trauma leads to adverse changes in mental functioning, manifesting as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Adverse consequences of trauma are well known and documented in the literature.
However, recently the attention focused on a phenomenon of post-traumatic growth (PTG), which means a paradoxical positive consequences of traumatic experiences. We are wondering why after extremely stressful events, certain people experience only adverse consequences in the form of PTSD, while others use the shock as an opportunity to reassess their lives and experience post-traumatic growth.
Take a look at the results of Professor Rzeszutek’s studies, covering over 15 years, which focus on the way in which people living with HIV handle traumatic stress accompanying coping with potentially fatal somatic disease.
