Posttraumatic Growth Following Suicide Bereavement: An Updated Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Posttraumatic growth (PTG) is personal growth which occurs due to experiencing a traumatic or extremely challenging event or crisis. As this review is an update, we aim to perform a contemporary search for demographic characteristics, correlational relationships, and facilitating as well as impeding factors of PTG in suicide bereaved individuals. Additionally, we aim to analyze and shed new light on inter- and intrapersonal (mal)adaptive factors in relation to PTG in individuals bereaved by suicide. Ten new studies from 2019 to 2024 were included after searching six databases. Combining these studies with the original review’s 11 studies meant 21 total studies were investigated (N = 4759 participants). A hierarchical meta-analysis examined impacts of demographic, loss-related, intrapersonal, and interpersonal variables on PTG. An extended analysis was also conducted to investigate intrapersonal and interpersonal (mal)adaptive factors’ effects on PTG. The original review’s findings were replicated showing consistent trends; time since loss, social support, and self-disclosure showed significant positive relationships with PTG. The extended analysis found intrapersonal and interpersonal adaptive factors to be significantly positively correlated to PTG while interpersonal maladaptive factors had a significant negative association with PTG. Interestingly, intrapersonal maladaptive factors showed no significant effect on PTG. This review highlights that implementing intrapersonal and interpersonal adaptive factors along with minimizing maladaptive factors could significantly aid PTG development for individuals bereaved by suicide. This is still a new field of study, so further exploration of facilitating and impeding factors of PTG is warranted.