Posttraumatic stress disorder following traumatic injury: Narratives as unconscious indicators of psychopathology

Hashemi, Bahar; Shaw, Richard J.; Hong, David S.; Hall, Rebecca E.; Nelson, Kristin L.; Steiner, Hans

doi:10.1521/bumc.2008.72.3.179

Cited by 6 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Unexpectedly, avoidance and peritraumatic dissociation were not related to the traumatic narrative length; however, both variables were related to a decelerated speech rate. It is presumably because they reflect difficulties in encoding and accessing memories, as well as in speech planning, which would result in long pauses, in agreement with the observations of Hashemi et al [ 21 ] and Römisch et al [ 8 ].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

“…Additionally, pauses have been considered to be an indicator of narrative fragmentation because they might reflect difficulties in elaborating and planning, as well as indicate a high arousal during recall [ 8 ]. Also, it has been suggested that long pauses could be related to a dissociative response [ 21 ]. These factors suggest that the differences in speech rate might be associated with different emotional responses to the traumatic experience.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Narrative Length and Speech Rate in Battered Women

Fernández-Lansac

Crespo

2015

PLoS ONE

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Narrative length and speech rate of traumatic recollections have been previously associated with different emotions and adjustment trajectories after trauma. However, the evidence is limited and the results are mixed. The present study aimed to evaluate length (i.e., word count) and speech rate (i.e., words per minute) in narratives of events with different valence (i.e., neutral, positive, and negative/traumatic) by 50 battered women (trauma group) and 50 non-traumatized women (controls). The results showed that traumatic narratives by the trauma group were longer than those by the control group. Moreover, they were inversely related to time since the event and anxiety during disclosure, whereas the speech rate was also inversely associated with anxiety, as well as with peritraumatic dissociation and avoidance. The shorter narratives for positive events and a decelerated speech pattern for traumatic experiences predicted psychological symptoms. Additionally, the individual’s emotional state predicted narrative aspects, with bidirectional effects. Our findings showed that linguistic characteristics of traumatic narratives (but also of narratives of positive events) revealed information about how the victims elaborated autobiographical memories and coped with the trauma.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Narrative Length and Speech Rate in Battered Women

Fernández-Lansac

Crespo

2015

PLoS ONE

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“…It has been widely used to evaluate the psychological impact of natural disasters and accidents[1,2,6-10]. To our knowledge this is the first study to explore the prediction of PTSD by risk score model among flood victims in a large population.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It can result in direct economic and property losses, physical injuries, deaths, and psychological injuries. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a common disorder among victims of various disasters such as traffic accidents[1,2], violent crimes[3], hurricanes[4], earthquakes[5,6], and floods [7-10]. PTSD is also a severe and complex disorder precipitated by exposure to psychologically distressing events, and it is characterized by persistent intrusive memories about the traumatic event, persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma, and persistent symptoms of increased arousal[11].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prediction of posttraumatic stress disorder among adults in flood district

et al. 2010

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BackgroundFlood is one of the most common and severe forms of natural disasters. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a common disorder among victims of various disasters including flood. Early prediction for PTSD could benefit the prevention and treatment of PTSD. This study aimed to establish a prediction model for the occurrence of PTSD among adults in flood districts.MethodsA cross-sectional survey was carried out in 2000 among individuals who were affected by the 1998 floods in Hunan, China. Multi-stage sampling was used to select subjects from the flood-affected areas. Data was collected through face-to-face interviews using a questionnaire. PTSD was diagnosed according to DSM-IV criteria. Study subjects were randomly divided into two groups: group 1 was used to establish the prediction model and group 2 was used to validate the model. We first used the logistic regression analysis to select predictive variables and then established a risk score predictive model. The validity of model was evaluated by using the model in group 2 and in all subjects. The area under the receiver operation characteristic (ROC) curve was calculated to evaluate the accuracy of the prediction model.ResultsA total of 2336 (9.2%) subjects were diagnosed as probable PTSD-positive individuals among a total of 25,478 study subjects. Seven independent predictive factors (age, gender, education, type of flood, severity of flood, flood experience, and the mental status before flood) were identified as key variables in a risk score model. The area under the ROC curve for the model was 0.853 in the validation data. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) of this risk score model were 84.0%, 72.2%, 23.4%, and 97.8%, respectively, at a cut-off value of 67.5 in the validation data.ConclusionsA simple risk score model can be used to predict PTSD among victims of flood.

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“…Both of these methods have significant limitations—self-report measures are subject to avoidance and defensive distortion while structured interviews are based on clinician judgment, which sometimes is difficult in highly defensive subjects who are not able to provide access to internal thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Both these methods however may lead to under-reporting of symptoms, especially in those who habitually deny psychological distress or who have cultural constraints on the expression of emotion (Hashemi et al, 2008 ).…”

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confidence: 99%

Emotional expressiveness and avoidance in narratives of unaccompanied refugee minors

Huemer

Nelson

Karnik

et al. 2016

European Journal of Psychotraumatology

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ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to examine a cohort of unaccompanied refugee minors (URMs) by means of psycholinguistic methods in order to obtain a more subtle picture of their degree of traumatization.MethodsTwenty-eight participants were included in the Stress-Inducing Speech Task (SIST) consisting of a free association (FA) and a stress (STR) condition. Narratives were examined by means of (1) quantitative parameters (word count); (2) psycholinguistic variables (temporal junctures, TJs), narrative structure, referential activity (RA)—a measure of emotional expressivity; and (3) content analysis ratings.ResultsWord count was significantly lower than in age-matched norms. In the FA condition, TJs were lower, but in the STR condition, rates were comparable. RA was significantly higher in both conditions. Content analysis ratings showed that the experiences described by these youths were potentially traumatic in nature.ConclusionsThis pattern of narrative shows a mixture of fulfilling the task demand, while containing an emotionally charged narrative. Narrative structure was absent in the FA condition, but preserved in the STR condition, as URMs struggled with the description of non-normative events. This indicates that these youths have not yet emotionally dealt with and fully integrated their trauma experiences.

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Posttraumatic stress disorder following traumatic injury: Narratives as unconscious indicators of psychopathology

Cited by 6 publications

References 26 publications

Narrative Length and Speech Rate in Battered Women

Narrative Length and Speech Rate in Battered Women

Prediction of posttraumatic stress disorder among adults in flood district

Emotional expressiveness and avoidance in narratives of unaccompanied refugee minors

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