Specificity of fear and disgust experienced during traumatic interpersonal victimization in predicting posttraumatic stress and contamination-based obsessive–compulsive symptoms

Abstract

Emerging evidence has documented comorbidity between posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) among individuals with a history of traumatic events. There is growing recognition of the importance of disgust in each of these conditions independently. No study, however, has examined the potential role of disgust in these conditions following traumatic event exposure. The current study examined the unique role of peritraumatic fear, self-focused disgust, and other-focused disgust in predicting posttraumatic stress symptoms and contamination-based OC symptoms among 49 adult women (Mage = 28.37, SD = 13.86) with a history of traumatic interpersonal victimization. Results demonstrated that intensity of peritraumatic self-focused disgust was significantly related to contamination-based OC symptoms while peritraumatic fear and other-focused disgust were related to posttraumatic stress symptoms. These results highlight the need for future research aimed at elucidating the nature of the association between disgust experienced during traumatic events and subsequent psychopathology.

Mental contamination: Relationship with psychopathology and transdiagnostic processes

“…Fear of compassion and low self-esteem were independent predictors of mental contamination after accounting for other variables. It is well established that mental contamination is closely associated with OCD, disgust, and trauma (Badour et al, 2012;Badour et al, 2014;Coughtrey et al, 2013); however the findings of this study replicate and extend the existing research to also highlight the links between mental contamination with perfectionism and fear of compassion and low self-esteem.…”

“…There has already been work demonstrating the association between trauma, disgust and mental contamination (e.g., Badour, Bown, Adams, Bunaciu, & Feldner, 2012;Badour, Ojserkis, McKay, & Feldner, 2014), and there is some indication that the relationship between trauma and mental contamination is moderated by tolerance of negative emotions (Fergus & Bardeen, 2015). In addition, given the high comorbidity between OCD and depression (Overbeek, Schruers, & Griez, 2002), anxiety (Crino & Andrews, 1996), and eating disorders (Altman & Shankman, 2009), it would be anticipated that there would be a close relationship between mental contamination and the psychopathology of each of these disorders.…”

Ten reasons for conceiving and classifying posttraumatic stress disorder as a dissociative disorder

“…The reclassifi cation is an improvement over PTSD's previous classifi cation as an anxiety disorder given involvement of other intense trauma-related affects such as anger (Kardiner 1941), disgust (Badour et al 2012), survivor guilt (Koranyi 1969), other types of guilt, and shame (Wilson et al 2006).…”

Disgust as a unique affective predictor of mental contamination following sexual trauma

“…For example, Tybur, Lieberman, and Griskevicius (2009) proposed three distinct domains of disgust, including pathogen disgust (e.g., disgust responses to contaminants that increase chance of illness or disease), sexual disgust (e.g., aversion to unconventional or potentially harmful sexual acts that increase illness probability and/or fail to produce progeny), and moral disgust (e.g., aversion toward perceived moral violations). It is easy to imagine that experiences involving sexual victimization may be capable of evoking any (or all) of these domains of disgust, and that such peritraumatic disgust responses may be involved in the development of mental and/or contact contamination concerns following the trauma (e.g., Badour, Bown, Adams, Bunaciu, & Feldner, 2012; Badour, Feldner, Blumenthal et al, 2013). …”