Is young age a risk factor for PTSD? Age differences in PTSD-symptoms after Hurricane Florence.

Abstract

Age differences in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are widely researched, but findings remain inconclusive. The mixed findings may in part result from sampling participants exposed to different trauma types at different times. Here, we controlled for this issue by sampling participants exposed to the same devastating hurricane. A total of 1.5 months after Hurricane Florence (T1), we asked 174 adults living in two severely affected states to describe their hurricane experience and fill in measures of PTSD and event centrality. Then, 7 months after the hurricane (T2), participants were reinvited to the survey, and 98 filled in the same questionnaire. The hurricane descriptions were coded for level of exposure severity. When controlling for trauma characteristics, including level of severity, younger age significantly predicted PTSD at T1 but not T2. When also controlling for event centrality, younger age predicted PTSD at both measurement times. Moreover, from T1 to T2, young adults significantly increased how severely they described their hurricane experience to be, whereas such amplification was absent in the older age groups. Overall, the findings provide some evidence that younger age increase vulnerability for PTSD and increase the perception of trauma severity over time.

Does age matter in posttraumatic stress disorder? The effects of age, event centrality, and trauma type on trauma aftermath.

“…Further, groups differed on CES, and CES was strongly correlated with PCL-5. As we previously found an age affect after controlling for CES (Kongshøj & Berntsen, 2022)-that is, contrary to our predictions-we added CES as a predictor both to control for this variability and to replicate the previous model. The final model thus consisted of two steps with age (at trauma vs. current) and retention interval in the first step and CES in the second.…”

“…For instance, Boals et al (2012) found young participants to consider their traumas more central than older participants, and this relationship mediated age differences in PTSD-symptoms, where younger participants displayed higher symptom levels. In contrast, in a study on hurricane victims, youth was associated with higher levels of PTSD-symptoms, but not due to differences in trauma centrality (Kongshøj & Berntsen, 2022). However, participants were generally not very impacted by the hurricane and did not rate the event as central to their life stories.…”

“…This illustrates one of the challenges of conducting trauma research sometime after the trauma happened and is most efficiently combatted by controlling the traumatic event, that is, only recruiting participants exposed to the same traumatic event. However, as previously emphasized, this may lead to other challenges in terms of trauma severity and impact (Kongshøj & Berntsen, 2022). Second, trauma type was investigated post hoc, and some of the trauma categories were small (i.e., only few adult trauma participants reported violent traumas).…”

“…However, empirical evidence on age differences in PTSD-symptoms is far from unanimous (Kongshøj & Berntsen, 2022; Kongshøj & Bohn, 2020). Some studies using community samples have reported older participants to show higher symptom levels (Hapke et al, 2006; Hauffa et al, 2011); others reported no age differences (Kazantzis et al, 2010; Perrin et al, 2014); and still others reported younger age to be associated with higher symptom levels (e.g., Lindert et al, 2009; McGinty et al, 2021; Reynolds et al, 2016).…”

Age‐dependent subcortical white and gray matter disruptions in veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder

“…It is possible that younger individuals may be more vulnerable to developing PTSD due to their increased grey matter volume or that their brains may be more susceptible to changes associated with PTSD. Young age is one of the potential risk factors that play a role in PTSD and it has been suggested that the younger age increase vulnerability for PTSD [37].The result of a symptom-based study by Konnert and Wong have proposed the less severe symptoms for older veterans instead of young veterans with PTSD [3].As compare to our study, blastexposed veterans have been found to experience an age-associated decrease in the integrity of their white matter, which may contribute to the neurodegenerative effects of the blast. Inthis study comparing veterans who had been exposed to close-range blasts (within 410 meters) to peers matched for age and severity of PTSD symptoms, it was found that there was a signi cant relationship between the amount of time since the veterans' most severe blast and fractional anisotropy in certain regions of the brain.…”