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Attachment anxiety, attachment avoidance, and perceived social support are examined as predictors of life-events distress. Clients at initial intake to an addiction treatment centre and university students in their graduating year were administered measures of attachment orientation, social support, and the experience of distressing life events. Hypotheses were tested across different categories of distressing life events (overall distress, bereavement, relationship dissolution, crime victimization, and severe accidents). We found that attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance have varying predictive utility for distress, depending on the type of event. Social support did not account for variance beyond attachment.
Keywords: attachment, social support, distress
Résumé
L'attachement anxieux, l'évitement de l'attachement et le soutien social perçu sont examinés en tant que prédicteurs de détresse liée à des événements de la vie. On a administré à des clients arrivant à un centre de traitement de la toxicomanie et à des étudiants en dernière année d'un programme universitaire des mesures pour déterminer leur orientation d'attachement, leur soutien social et leur expérience d'événements pénibles. Les hypothèses ont été vérifiées au moyen de différentes catégories d'événements pénibles (détresse globale, deuil, rupture d'une relation, victimisation pour crime et accidents graves). La recherche a révélé que l'attachement anxieux et l'évitement de l'attachement ont une valeur prédictive variable de la détresse selon le type d'événement. Le soutien social n'est associé à aucune variation autre que l'attachement.
Mots-clés : attachement, soutien social, détresse
Most people are exposed to traumatic and highly distressing events in their lifetime. In fact, the lifetime prevalence of traumatic event exposure has been estimated to be as high as 90% of the general population (Breslau et al., 1998). Still, resilience in the face of such adversities is common and occurs through multiple pathways (Bonanno, 2004). Although a number of pathways have been explored with respect to fostering resilience (e.g., hardiness; Zakin, Solomon, & Neria, 2003), the present research examined the overlapping contributions of adult attachment orientation and the perception of available social support.
Research in this area has for the most part been limited to the study of distressing events that adhere to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text rev.; DSMIV-TR; American Psychiatric Association, 2000) definition of trauma. According to the DSM-N-TR (American Psychiatric Association, 2000, p....