Pilot Testing a New Short Screen for the Assessment of Older Women's PTSD Symptomatology

Abstract

It is difficult for busy health care providers to perform routine screening for older women’s posttraumatic stress symptomatology, due, at least partially, to a paucity of instruments specifically tested on such a population. To address this issue, in this preliminarily study we tested an abbreviated screen from the set of 20 items comprising the Distressing Event Questionnaire (DEQ; Kubany, Leisen, Kaplan, & Kelly, 2000) on a convenience sample of 94 ethnically diverse older women (ages 52–105). This new 5-item derivation, named “Brief Posttraumatic Stress Screening Scale (BPSSS)”, assesses posttraumatic stress based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - IV (DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Its conciseness reduces the likelihood that older women would become fatigued during assessment, making it ideal for use in busy health care settings. Because the BPSSS has only five items, a single factor was hypothesized to account for a large proportion of the variance in its items, in view of the hypothesized cohesiveness of the tool’s five items. We also expected that scores on the screen would correlate (to a certain extent) with those on measures of depression and perceived stress of a non-traumatic and non-medical nature. A standardized alpha of .86 demonstrated high internal consistency of the BPSSS and the exploratory factor analysis showed that one factor accounted for 58% of the five items’ variance. Moreover, the correlations of BPSSS scores with scores on non-traumatic stress and depression were moderate yet significant (r = .37, p < .01 and r = .50, p < .01, respectively).

A pilot study on perceived stress and PTSD symptomatology in relation to four dimensions of older women's physical health

“…Scores on each of the five symptom-related items range from 0, that is, absent or did not occur, to 4, that is, present to an extreme or severe degree. Kubany, the first author of the DEQ, created the BPSSS (as further detailed in Lagana`& Schuitevoerder, 2009) at the Honolulu National Center for PTSD by selecting the five DEQ items that had the highest correlational values (ranging from 0.75 to 0.91) with the total DEQ scores obtained in two PTSD studies (described in Kubany et al, 2000). …”

“…This list, developed by Lagana`, is a 10-item tool containing questions on demographic variables such as age, ethnicity, marital status, education, and stated income.The Brief Posttraumatic Stress Screening ScaleThe Brief Posttraumatic Stress Screening Scale (BPSSS;Lagana`& Schuitevoerder, 2009) is the new abbreviated version of the 20-item distressing event questionnaire (DEQ;Kubany, Leisen, Kaplan, & Kelly, 2000) that assesses PTSD symptomatology based on the DSM-IV-TR (American Psychiatric Association…”

The Role of Rumination in Elevating Perceived Stress in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

“…Perceived stress provides useful information beyond more objective measures of exposure to stressful events because it describes the individual’s interpretation of these stressors and his or her anticipated ability to negotiate such challenges. As such, research investigating the relationship between posttraumatic stress and more global perceived stress has found that increased posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom severity and higher levels of perceived stress frequently co-occur in a variety of populations (e.g., Besser, Neria, & Haynes, 2009; Frasier et al, 2004; Laganá & Schuitevoerder, 2009; Qu et al, 2012). Perceived stress has also been identified as a specific risk factor in the development (Fincham, Altes, Stein, & Seedat, 2009; Haisch & Meyers, 2004) and experience (Besser et al, 2009) of PTSD.…”

Fostering resilience later in life: a narrative approach involving people facing disabling circumstances, carers and members of minority groups

“…Given the estimated size of the problem, the topic of trauma in later life and associated resilience building has received surprisingly little attention (Anderson 2009; Hyer and Sohnle 2001). Researchers focusing on trauma in later life tend to focus on veterans, largely neglecting the impact of trauma on older women (Lagana 2009). Also, researchers largely ignore how unresolved traumatic events experienced earlier in life can impact on resilience later in life.…”