ArticleEuropean journal of psychotraumatology2015
How to quantify exposure to traumatic stress? Reliability and predictive validity of measures for cumulative trauma exposure in a post-conflict population.
Article in European journal of psychotraumatology, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 74 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
74 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Toward a Better Understanding of Psychological Symptoms in People Confronted With the Disappearance of a Loved One: A Systematic Review.Trauma, violence & abuse · 2019Pooled it
- Frequency and correlates of suicidality in a sample of traumatized treatment-seeking refugees.BMC psychiatry · 2026Trial
- DNA methylation changes following narrative exposure therapy in a randomized controlled trial with female former child soldiers.Scientific reports · 2021Trial
- Racial discrimination, racial trauma, and complex post-traumatic stress disorder: the role of emotion dysregulation as a mediating factor in Black, African, and Afrodiasporic people in Germany.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2026Article
- Differentiating Exposure From Consequence: A Longitudinal Examination of Trauma and Posttraumatic Distress in a Public HIV Care Clinic.AIDS and behavior · 2026Article
- Posttraumatic stress in German volunteer lifeguards: evidence for the building block effect.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Experiences and Impacts of Intimate Partner Violence Against Men in Northern Ireland: Qualitative Findings from the Male Experiences of Intimate Partner Violence Study.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Sexual victimization in minors and mental health issues.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- Complex posttraumatic stress disorder in treatment-seeking refugees: the role of trauma history, post-migration stressors and comorbid symptoms.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2025Article
- The impact of trauma and how to intervene: a narrative review of psychotraumatology over the past 15 years.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2025Article
- The mediating role of resilience in the association between trauma type and CPTSD among Swiss older adults.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2025Article
- Complex trauma and perceived barriers to treatment among people accessing a supervised injecting facility.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2025Article
- What is latent about trauma exposure? Commentary on the use of latent class analysis for identifying trauma subtypes.Journal of mood and anxiety disorders · 2025Article
- Heroes in Red: Traumatic Event Exposure Linked to Reduced Wellbeing Among a Cohort of U.S. Ski Patrollers.Wilderness & environmental medicine · 2025Article
- Post-migration stress mediates associations between potentially traumatic peri-migration experiences and mental health among Middle Eastern refugees in Germany.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Fleeing the war: A socio-ecological perspective on the mental health of internally displaced and refugee children and adolescents living in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.PLOS mental health · 2025Article
- Effects of violence on executive function: a neuropsychological and predictive analysis in victims of the armed conflict in Colombia.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Article
- Observational
- Interactions between latent variables in count regression models.Behavior research methods · 2024Article
- Differential methylation of linoleic acid pathway genes is associated with PTSD symptoms - a longitudinal study with Burundian soldiers returning from a war zone.Translational psychiatry · 2024Article
14 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
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Abstract
backgroundWhile studies with survivors of single traumatic experiences highlight individual response variation following trauma, research from conflict regions shows that almost everyone develops posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) if trauma exposure reaches extreme levels. Therefore, evaluating the effects of cumulative trauma exposure is of utmost importance in studies investigating risk factors for PTSD. Yet, little research has been devoted to evaluate how this important environmental risk factor can be best quantified.
methodsWe investigated the retest reliability and predictive validity of different trauma measures in a sample of 227 Ugandan rebel war survivors. Trauma exposure was modeled as the number of traumatic event types experienced or as a score considering traumatic event frequencies. In addition, we investigated whether age at trauma exposure can be reliably measured and improves PTSD risk prediction.
resultsAll trauma measures showed good reliability. While prediction of lifetime PTSD was most accurate from the number of different traumatic event types experienced, inclusion of event frequencies slightly improved the prediction of current PTSD.
conclusionsAs assessing the number of traumatic events experienced is the least stressful and time-consuming assessment and leads to the best prediction of lifetime PTSD, we recommend this measure for research on PTSD etiology.
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