The purpose of this study was to investigate whether a psycho-educational
intervention program could support traumatised people to increase their mental
toughness. Mental toughness is a well proven phenomenon in sports psychology as
well as in leadership in the corporate world. I wanted to apply the use of mental
toughness in trauma. Literature was consulted to understand the phenomena of
mental toughness and trauma respectively. The corresponding aspects of mental
toughness and trauma were selected for the literature review and many similarities
between mental toughness and trauma were discovered. The corresponding aspects
included action taking, the importance of the “self”, facing negativity and adversity,
the importance of support systems, flexibility and adjustment, dealing with guilt and
self-blame, the role of self-talk, people’s perceptions, goal-setting, commitment,
helplessness / learned helplessness and dealing with stress. I used the
corresponding aspects to compile a psycho-educational intervention programme to
support traumatised persons to develop increased mental toughness that will support them to better deal with trauma.
A valid and reliable psychometric instrument, the MTQ48 (Mental Toughness
Questionnaire 48), has been successfully used to determine people’s mental
toughness in sports psychology and in corporate management, but has never been
tested before in supporting traumatised people. An action research design was
employed, where both qualitative as well as quantitative methods were used. This is
also known as a mixed research design. Eight traumatised people took part in the
research which was presented weekly, as individual sessions, over eight weeks. Data
collection methods included questionnaires, observation and individual therapy.
The results of the study indicated that seven of the eight participants’ overall mental
toughness increased after the intervention program, and four of the eight participants’
mental toughness components increased. As an additional benefit, all respondents
indicated that they could better deal and cope with their trauma after the intervention
program. The conclusion could be drawn that the psycho-educational intervention
program was successful in supporting the traumatised participants to increase their
mental toughness. / Psychology of Education / D. Ed. (Psychology of Education)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:unisa/oai:umkn-dsp01.int.unisa.ac.za:10500/19610 |
| Date | 10 1900 |
| Creators | Van Niekerk, Anna Maria Susanna |
| Contributors | Roets, H. E. (Hester Elizabeth) |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 1 online resource (xvi, 334 leaves) : color illustrations, diagrams |
Page generated in 0.0024 seconds