scholarly journals An Enduring Somatic Threat Model of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Due to Acute Life-Threatening Medical Events

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 118-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald Edmondson
Keyword(s):  
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder ◽  
Posttraumatic Stress ◽  
Stress Disorder ◽  
Threat Model ◽  
Life Threatening

scholarly journals Biomarkers in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Overview and Implications for Future Research

2013 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 43-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrike Schmidt ◽  
Sebastian F. Kaltwasser ◽  
Carsten T. Wotjak
Keyword(s):  
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder ◽  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Anxiety Disorder ◽  
Posttraumatic Stress ◽  
Stress Disorder ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Clinical Use ◽  
Current State ◽  
Life Threatening ◽  
State Of Research

PTSD can develop in the aftermath of traumatic incidents like combat, sexual abuse, or life threatening accidents. Unfortunately, there are still no biomarkers for this debilitating anxiety disorder in clinical use. Anyhow, there are numerous studies describing potential PTSD biomarkers, some of which might progress to the point of practical use in the future. Here, we outline and comment on some of the most prominent findings on potential imaging, psychological, endocrine, and molecular PTSD biomarkers and classify them into risk, disease, and therapy markers. Since for most of these potential PTSD markers a causal role in PTSD has been demonstrated or at least postulated, this review also gives an overview on the current state of research on PTSD pathobiology.

Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms in a Population of Rural Children in South Africa

1999 ◽  
Vol 85 (2) ◽  
pp. 646-650 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl Peltzer
Keyword(s):  
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder ◽  
Posttraumatic Stress ◽  
Stress Disorder ◽  
Traumatic Event ◽  
Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms ◽  
Unexpected Death ◽  
Loved One ◽  
Stress Symptoms ◽  
Life Threatening ◽  
Age Range

The purpose of the study was to identify exposure to experiences such as violence and the consequences for health in children in a rural South African community. The stratified random sample included 148 children below 17 yr., which comprised 68 (46%) boys and 80 (54%) girls in the age range of 6 to 16 years ( M = 12.1 yr., SD = 3.1). Their ethnicity was Northern Sotho. The interviews included the Children's Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Inventory and the Reporting Questionnaire for Children. The experiences could be grouped into either traumatic or other events. 99 (67%) had directly or vicariously experienced a traumatic event which included witnessing someone killed or seriously injured, serious accident, violent or very unexpected death or suicide of loved one, sexual abuse or rape of relative or friend, violent crime, child abuse, and other life-threatening situations. Scores on the Children's Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Inventory of 17 (8.4%) fulfilled the criterion for posttraumatic stress disorder. 71% had more than one score and 53% had more than four scores on the Reporting Questionnaire for Children. Posttraumatic stress symptoms were significantly related to age and experiences such as those mentioned above.

scholarly journals Posttraumatic stress disorder among women after the war in Sarajevo: a rationale for genetic study.

2004 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lilijana Oruč ◽  
Lejla Kapur ◽  
Naris Pojskić ◽  
Semra Čavaljuga ◽  
Slađana Ivezić ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder ◽  
Posttraumatic Stress ◽  
Life Events ◽  
Stress Disorder ◽  
Harvard Trauma Questionnaire ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Life Threatening ◽  
War Survivors ◽  
Gender Specific ◽  
Ptsd Prevalence

An exposure to extreme trauma events leads to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in up to 14-50% of war survivors. Recent findings suggest that genetic factors could play a certain role in PTSD development. In order to illustrate this possibility, we present results of a pilot study on gender specific sample of Sarajevo civilians immediately after the war cessation. During the period 1992-1995, Sarajevo civilians experienced continuous life threatening events with a great risk of developing PTSD in such conditions.Our study included 100 women adjusted to same socio-demographic characteristics. All women were interviewed using Harvard Trauma Questionnaire (HTQ) and divided into two groups (domestic and returnees) according to exposure length to extreme war life events of six or forty-three months. Above 50% of total analysed sample fulfilled criteria for PTSD. Regarding duration in trauma exposure no significant difference between these two groups were found. The only significant predictor found was physical abuse (p>0.01) that still cannot explain why some women develop PTSD while others not.Several years after the war, PTSD frequencies are decreased and disorder became chronic and more severe. However, the PTSD prevalence remains high when compared to general population rates. Therefore, Sarajevo population being exposed for almost four years to extreme war life events represents unique model for comparative research on PTSD etiology within the light of latest findings in molecular genetics of PTSD.

Diagnosis of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder with the MMPI: Pk Scale Scores in Somatization Disorder

2000 ◽  
Vol 87 (2) ◽  
pp. 535-541 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard D. Wetzel ◽  
Paula J. Clayton ◽  
C. Robert Cloninger ◽  
John Brim ◽  
Ronald L. Martin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder ◽  
Major Depression ◽  
Posttraumatic Stress ◽  
Stress Disorder ◽  
Somatization Disorder ◽  
Women Patients ◽  
Scale Scores ◽  
Life Threatening ◽  
Pk Scale ◽  
Life Threatening Event

Clinic patients with diagnoses of either major depression or somatization disorder were given the MMPI. Women with somatization disorder had high scores on Keane's MMPI scale (PK) for posttraumatic stress disorder. Following the procedure for the MMPI-2 (46 of the 49 PK items and MMPI-2 norms), 59% of the women with somatization disorder and 21% of the women with major depression would have T scores ≥ 65 on the MMPI-2 scale although none of them were known to have developed psychiatric disorder after exposure to a life threatening event. The PK scale has little use in the differential diagnosis of women patients with somatization disorder.

The Management of Terror

2021 ◽  
pp. 21-30
Author(s):  
Gary Rodin ◽  
Sarah Hales
Keyword(s):  
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder ◽  
Posttraumatic Stress ◽  
Family Caregivers ◽  
Stress Disorder ◽  
Acute Stress ◽  
Mortality Salience ◽  
Psychological Impact ◽  
Acute Onset ◽  
Fear Of Death ◽  
Life Threatening

This chapter addresses the psychological impact of life-threatening disease of acute onset. Anxiety may be profound in this circumstance, with the severity of symptoms often meeting criteria for acute stress disorder (ASD) or posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in both patients and family caregivers. The nature of traumatic stress and the ways in which it may be alleviated by Managing Cancer and Living Meaningfully (CALM) therapy are described here. Terror management theory (TMT), including the psychological pillars that protect individuals from the fear of death, is introduced as a model to understand how death anxiety is managed when mortality salience is heightened. The influence of TMT in formulating our research and in developing the CALM intervention is described here.

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Associated with Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment

2021 ◽  
pp. 363-373
Author(s):  
Matthew Doolittle ◽  
Katherine N. DuHamel
Keyword(s):  
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder ◽  
General Population ◽  
Posttraumatic Stress ◽  
Stress Responses ◽  
Stress Disorder ◽  
Diagnosis And Treatment ◽  
Catastrophic Event ◽  
Medical Trauma ◽  
Vulnerable Patients ◽  
Life Threatening

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a set of maladaptive responses to intensely fearful or life-threatening events. Unlike other traumas, the trauma of cancer is not generally a single catastrophic event, but is instead an ongoing series of fearful and painful experiences associated with the threat of death. Unlike the DSM-IV, the DSM-5 defines medical trauma in objective terms as an identifiable catastrophic event, and this complicates the applicability of the model to cancer. Nonetheless, maladaptive stress responses can clearly result in increased distress in cancer patients, and in a subset of highly symptomatic people they may interfere with adherence to necessary or even life-saving medical treatments. The heterogeneity of studies and methodologies does not yet allow clear estimation of the prevalence of such responses. However, rates of posttraumatic stress symptoms among patients diagnosed with cancer are consistently higher than those in the general population. Risk factors are not clearly defined in the general population and are less well described in the cancer population, but it is likely that patients with pre-existing psychiatric diagnoses and especially patients with prior trauma are at elevated risk. Diagnosis and treatment of PTSD in the cancer setting are currently analogous to that in the noncancer setting, although research on nonpharmacological interventions is developing, and research on medications is almost nonexistent. For psycho-oncologists, the task is to devise more effective and methodical ways of identifying at-risk or symptomatic populations, and to develop treatments that may improve the quality of life and improve adherence in these vulnerable patients.

Chilean Validation of the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist–Civilian Version (PCL–C) after the Earthquake on February 27, 2010

2011 ◽  
Vol 109 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo Vera-Villarroel ◽  
Karem Celis-Atenas ◽  
Natalia Córdova-Rubio ◽  
Izabela Zych ◽  
Gualberto Buela-Casal
Keyword(s):  
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder ◽  
Anxiety Disorder ◽  
Posttraumatic Stress ◽  
Natural Disaster ◽  
Stress Disorder ◽  
Traumatic Event ◽  
Psychometric Data ◽  
Life Threatening ◽  
Life Threatening Event ◽  
Subsequent Intervention

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder in which an individual re-experiences a traumatic event, avoids situations related to it, and shows excessive arousal. The disorder appears after experiencing a life-threatening event, such as a war or a natural disaster. Thus, the validation of tests which assess the disorder after the earthquake on February 27, 2010, in Chile is crucial for its evaluation and subsequent intervention. The present study includes psychometric data for the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist–Civilian version (PCL–C) on a sample of 509 survivors of the disaster. Values indicate good psychometric properties of the questionnaire.

scholarly journals Genomic Characterization of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in a Large US Military Veteran Sample

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Murray B. Stein ◽  
Daniel F. Levey ◽  
Zhongshan Cheng ◽  
Frank R. Wendt ◽  
Kelly Harrington ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder ◽  
Posttraumatic Stress ◽  
Stress Disorder ◽  
Drug Repositioning ◽  
Genetic Correlations ◽  
Postmortem Brain ◽  
Association Analyses ◽  
Symptom Level ◽  
Life Threatening ◽  
New Treatments

ABSTRACTIndividuals vary in their liability to develop Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), the symptoms of which are highly heterogeneous, following exposure to life-threatening trauma. Understanding genetic factors that contribute to the biology of PTSD is critical for refining diagnosis and developing new treatments. Using genetic data from more than 250,000 participants in the Million Veteran Program, genomewide association analyses were conducted using a validated electronic health record-based algorithmically-defined PTSD diagnosis phenotype (48,221 cases and 217,223 controls), and PTSD quantitative symptom phenotypes (212,007 individuals). We identified several genome-wide significant loci in the case-control analyses, and numerous such loci in the quantitative trait analyses, including some (e.g., MAD1L1; TCF4; CRHR1) that were associated with multiple symptom sub-domains and total symptom score, and others that were more specific to certain symptom sub-domains (e.g., CAMKV to re-experiencing; SOX6 to hyperarousal). Genetic correlations between all pairs of symptom sub-domains and their total were very high (rg 0.93 – 0.98) supporting validity of the PTSD diagnostic construct. We also demonstrate strong shared heritability with a range of traits, show that heritability persists when conditioned on other major psychiatric disorders, present independent replication results, provide support for one of the implicated genes in postmortem brain of individuals with PTSD, and use this information to identify potential drug repositioning candidates. These results point to the utility of genetics to inform and validate the biological coherence of the PTSD syndrome despite considerable heterogeneity at the symptom level, and to provide new directions for treatment development.

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