The Pave Project Report - Queen's University Belfast

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The PAVE Project Report
not true for PTSD symptom severity. Before concluding that these effects were due to
services received, we excluded other extraneous causal factors. We did this by
utilizing the D.I.S.C. framework proposed by Dillenburger and Keenan (2005). We
found that death or trauma-related events, individual variables, social factors, and
cultural variables only had marginal effects on psychological health, levels of
depression, and PTSD symptom severity during the assessment period. However, we
found that the experience of additional stressful life events affected psychological
health as well as levels of depression and PTSD severity adversely. Therefore, we
were able to conclude that, overall, voluntary sector services seem to be achieving
their stated aims of helping services users who experienced Troubles-related trauma,
especially for those who experienced additional life stresses.
The identification of exactly which services were most effective was more difficult, as
most of the participants used more than one services at a time. However, statistical
analysis showed that there were clear indications that some services, specifically
befriending, self-help/support groups as well as reflexology were related to
significant improvements in general psychological health and levels of depression.
The results for some of the other services, such as advice and information, massage,
aromatherapy, group therapy, respite care/time-out, youth work, narrative work and
counselling were not as clear, i.e., while some people improved significantly using
these services, others who did not avail of these services also improved significantly.
However, all of these services were highly valued by interviewees. In sum, we found
that community-based and some complementary services were significantly related to
improvements in generally psychological wellbeing and lowering levels of