Prison as an existential challenge: Meaning and posttraumatic growth during incarceration

We conducted a quantitative pilot-study (n=30) with sexual offenders and a qualitative and quantitative study (n= 365) with mid-security and high-security prisoners in Belgium in order to research meaning-making processes and posttraumatic growth during incarceration. The exceptionally high response rate of the study (83%) demonstrates the importance of existential themes to prisoners. We start from the hypotheses that incarceration has the potential to evoke a deep personal crisis, confronting the prisoner with his or her existential relationship with physical, social, personal and spiritual aspects of human existence. We explore how posttraumatic growth arises in this context, how this growth is related to the prisoner’s search for and presence of meaning in life, and the influence of variables (such as emotional support, denial and guilt) on constructive meaning-making processes. The results of this study will be illustrated with excerpts of in-depth interviews with prisoners regarding how they experience loss and growth in the physical, social, personal and spiritual dimension of human existence during incarceration. Finally we present recommendations for existential counseling and psychotherapy in a prison setting.status: publishe