Introduction: Mental health problems are common in trauma survivors. In particular, depression, anxiety, acute stress disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Yet little is known about how these can be brought to the early attention of medical professionals through patients' accounts of trauma within days of being admitted to emergency care. This study aims to understand how physical trauma patients with early signs of psychological distress, stemming from the trauma, might be supported through their communications with healthcare professionals.Methods: 42 semi-structured interviews with trauma victims attending the Royal London Hospital Trauma Clinic, taken as part of a larger project, were analysed using a qualitative thematic analysis method with a critical realist approach.Results: Four key themes were highlighted: Pain and Death, Positivity, Powerlessness, and Remembering and Blame, each with relating subthemes such as Facing Death, Heroism, Waiting Time and Self-blame. Discussion:The themes present within the data suggest that there are cues shared by trauma survivors that medical professionals should attend to with regard to the future mental health of their patients. Results may further equip nurses and clinical staff to spot early signs immediately and shortly after trauma.
The attentional biases of individuals with high and low levels of depression and anxiety were tested using the Attentional Blink paradigm. A rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task was used to detect biases in identification of emotionally valenced target images. The independent variables were depression, anxiety, lag of target stimulus, and emotional valence of target images. The dependent variables were accuracy, reaction times, and pupil dilation. As predicted, attentional biases were found for symptoms of both depression and anxiety, independently and co-morbidly, for dependent variables. The data suggest that there are both differences and similarities in the effects of symptoms of anxiety and depression on attentional biases around emotional stimuli.
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