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PTSD Symptoms Occur After Nontraumatic Events

PTSD symptoms can occur after severe life difficulties that most people would not consider traumatic.

Researchers have recently attempted to delineate the types of events that qualify as traumatic and could cause post-traumatic stress disorder (i.e., an event involving actual or threatened death or serious injury). Still, these categories have undergone considerable expansion. To learn more about the types of events leading to PTSD, researchers asked 2997 adults to complete a carefully written questionnaire that included a history of stressful events and a PTSD symptom checklist (intrusive recollections, avoidance, and overarousal symptoms). Symptom scores were then compared between 533 respondents who experienced life events not traditionally seen as traumatic or causative of PTSD (e.g., job loss, divorce) and 299 respondents who had experienced clear-cut traumatic events.

Surprisingly, for events in the previous 30 years, symptom scores were significantly higher in individuals with nontraumatic life events than in individuals with traumatic precipitants. For events more than 30 years earlier, symptom scores were comparable in the two groups. The findings remained significant after adjustment for differences in demographics, life history of stressful events (e.g., number of events excluding the index event), individual item scores, and distribution of total scores.

Comment: PTSD symptoms can occur after severe life difficulties that most people would not consider traumatic. This finding is consistent with a trend in which the potential precipitants of PTSD have widened, from severe combat and torture to an appropriately wider group of civilian traumas. Evidence exists that trauma can precipitate a range of depressive and anxiety-disorder syndromes. Ultimately, this line of reasoning may call into question the concept of PTSD as being clearly distinct from these other stress-precipitated disorders.

— Peter Roy-Byrne, MD

Published in Journal Watch Psychiatry August 3, 2005

Citation(s):

Mol SSL et al. Symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder after non-traumatic events: Evidence from an open population study. Br J Psychiatry 2005 Jun; 186:494-9.

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