Brazilian version of the Structured Interview for Disorders of Extreme Stress - Revised (SIDES-R): adaptation and validation process

BACKGROUND: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) contemplates the impact of acute traumatic events, but the literature indicates that this is not true for chronic exposure to stress. In this sense, the category disorders of extreme stress not otherwise specified (DESNOS) has been proposed to characterize the behavior and cognitive alterations derived from exposure to continuous early life stress. The Structured Interview for Disorders of Extreme Stress - Revised (SIDES-R) was developed to investigate and measure DESNOS. Considering the lack of instruments designed to assess DESNOS, especially in Brazil, the aim of this study was to translate, adapt, and validate the contents of SIDES-R to Brazilian Portuguese (SIDES-R-BR). METHOD: The original interview was subjected to translation, back-translation, semantic equivalence and conceptual correspondence analyses by naive and specialized judges, respectively, an acceptability trial, and inter-rater validity analysis. RESULTS: The interview underwent semantic and structural adaptations considering the Brazilian culture. The final version, SIDES-R-BR, showed a mean understanding score of 4.98 on a 5-point verbal rating scale, in addition to a kappa coefficient of 0.853. CONCLUSION: SIDES-R-BR may be a useful tool in the investigation of DESNOS and contributes a valuable input to clinical research in Brazil. The availability of the instrument allows to test symptoms with adequate reliability, as verified by the kappa coefficient and translation steps.

A Commentary on : A Valid Test of Resource Development and Installation? Absolutely Not

Researchers have published evidence supporting both the “working memory” and the “REM/Orienting Response” hypotheses as mechanisms underlying the documented treatment effects of EMDR on patients with posttraumatic stress disorder. Hornsveld et al. (2011) provide additional evidence of the impact of eye movements (EMs) on aspects of positive memory recall, but overstate their findings relevance to resource development and installation (RDI: Korn & Leeds, 2002) and to the interhemispheric interaction hypothesis (Propper & Christman, 2008). Most likely multiple mechanisms underlie the observed effects of EMDR and RDI. The needed RDI test is to randomly assign patients with Disorders of Extreme Stress not Otherwise Specified with measured coping difficulties to alternate conditions: one an RDI procedure without bilateral (or other distracting) sensory stimulation and one with bilateral EMs.