Which traumatic events lead to Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)?

• February 25, 2010 5:00am

Not all trauma exposure leads to Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Cal State East Bay Psychology Professor David Sandberg, Statistics Professor Eric Suess, and psychology student Jessica Heaton studied 224 ethnically diverse college women to help identify what variables might play a role.

What they discovered is that traumatic events like sexual victimization and intimate partner violence are associated wtih disrupted attachment patterns (i.e., fear of rejection and abandonment), which, in turn, are associated with higher levels of posttraumatic stress.

According to Dr. Sandberg, "Identifying and addressing variables that mediate, or help explain the relationship between trauma exposure and the development or maintenance of posttraumatic stress, is an important step in improving the effectiveness of therapy provided to individuals who have experienced such events."

Their research, titled “Attachment Anxiety as a Mediator of the Relationship Between Interpersonal Trauma and Posttraumatic Symptomatology Among College Women,” was recently published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence. CSUEB students and staff can access the full document via the library at SAGE Journals Online.

--Kimberly Legocki