(PS13-93) Examining Caregiving Experiences of Social Support Providers After Trauma

Social support is necessary after trauma (Ruzek et al., 2007). However, difficulty occupying a support provider role may negatively impact the potential benefits friends, family, and romantic partners can offer trauma survivors as they attempt to recover (Klarić et al., 2010), and little research has been done from the supporter perspective. The present study sought to examine supporter experiences in an online sample of romantic partner supporters (N=513) of traumatic injury survivors recruited online via crowdsourcing. It was hypothesized that partners’ support provision experiences (i.e., social support frequency and difficulty) and their sense of caregiver mastery would be associated with perceptions of trauma survivor recovery or nonrecovery. Results suggested a significant main effect of support difficulty (B = -.23***) and caregiver mastery (B =.36***) on perceptions of survivor recovery. Support frequency was not significantly associated with survivor recovery (B = -.07). Additionally, there was a significant interaction of support difficulty and caregiver mastery (B = .12**). The study concluded that increased caregiver mastery is associated with survivor recovery, support difficulty is associated with survivor nonrecovery, and that the strength of the relationship between support difficulty and survivor recovery depends on caregiver mastery. Future work should explore caregiver mastery as a potential mediator of the relationship between support difficulty and survivor recovery.