Context matters Understanding and providing psychosocial support after potentially traumatic events

People can be exposed to a wide variety of Potentially Traumatic Events (PTEs), for example getting into a traffic accident or losing a loved one unexpectedly. Psychosocial support should be provided at an early stage. Evaluating the provided psychosocial support instruments can help facilitate their implementation in practice.
The objective of this dissertation is to contribute to the understanding and provision of psychosocial support in different contexts. The findings are based on studies using both quantitative and qualitative research methods. Part one focuses on furthering our understanding of factors contributing to a resilient response after a PTE. Furthermore, it focuses on examining the differences and similarities in optimal psychosocial support in different contexts. The second part of the dissertation provides and evaluates three different psychosocial support instruments – a screening instrument, monitoring instrument and online one-stop shop - in practice.
Overall, this dissertation shows that individuals have different responses to PTEs and have different needs when it comes to receiving psychosocial support. Each context requires that specific principles of psychosocial support receive attention. At the same time, central principles of psychosocial support can be identified across all contexts. Furthermore, the studies in this dissertation show the importance of including relevant stakeholders in providing psychosocial support. The perspective of both users and providers offers useful lessons that give direction to the implementation of psychosocial support in different contexts. We conclude that, when it comes to the understanding and provision of psychosocial support, context matters.