Injury Recovery Improvement Study

University Of Colorado At Colorado Springs, Colorado Springs CO

Investigators

Abstract

Every year, millions of people in the U.S. experience a traumatic injury that requires emergency medical care. For many of these people, managing what has happened to them and moving forward with their lives requires extensive coping efforts. However, a subset will struggle to cope, and some will experience serious mental health problems. Surprisingly, very little is known about how this initial coping process unfolds and what predicts who will do well and who will struggle. This project tests a theory of the key biological, psychological, and social markers of effective versus ineffective coping in the early stages of traumatic injury recovery. Gaining this insight is vital to the development of future real-time interventions. Results of the research offer other societal benefits that inform healthcare policy, trauma support and disaster response, and understanding how survivors recover from other major traumas including sexual assault, war, and disasters. This project breaks new scientific ground by developing and extending theory that accounts for coping dynamics following traumatic injury recovery. It focuses on Self-Regulation Shift Theory, which uses a dynamical systems framework to account for nonlinear shifts in psychological functioning. One aim is to critically test hypothesized tipping points for both adaptive and maladaptive copying dynamics. A second aim is to evaluate the possibility of detecting early warning signals for impending shifts in functioning. A final aim is to evaluate the frequency and timing of nonlinear shifts within identified recovery trajectories. The research follows 300 injury survivors using innovative multi-source data collection, including biosensor, self-report survey, daily electronic diary, and audio self-report data. Using novel methods and advanced nonlinear analytic techniques, this project advances basic knowledge of acute trauma adaptation and advances current theoretical models of traumatic stress recovery. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.