The assessment of trauma history in women with Co-occurring substance abuse and mental Disorders and a history of interpersonal Violence

Abstract

The Women, Co-occurring Disorders, and Violence Study (WCDVS) was a large (N = 2729) multisite study of the effectiveness of integrated and trauma-informed services for women with substance use and mental health disorders and a history of interpersonal violence (physical or sexual abuse). Study participants' exposure to lifetime and current traumatic events was assessed at baseline and follow-up via in-person interviews. This article describes the choice of the Life Stressor Checklist-Revised (LSC-R) to assess trauma history to meet the WCDVS's research aims and to respond to consumer input. Quantitative data address the breadth and prevalence of potentially traumatic events in the past and current lives of study participants, the formation and properties of summary measures, and test-retest reliability. Qualitative data address tolerance of the instrument by interviewers and respondents and the generalizability of quantitative findings about trauma prevalence. Finally, recommendations are offered for improvements to the WCDVS version of the LSC-R for use in future research.

Reliability of reports of childhood trauma in bipolar disorder: A test–retest study over 18 months

“…Reporting of trauma in young men has been shown to be unstable over time mainly due to false negatives in reporting; a tendency to underreport trauma initially is common (Fergusson, Horwood, & Woodward, 2000). Reliability in trauma reporting in a group of females with mental health problems and/or substance misuse was adequate for most items (McHugo et al, 2005;Meyer, Muenzenmaier, Cancienne & Struening, 1996). Similar high reliability was found even in populations with severe mental health problems such as schizophrenia (Fisher et al, 2009).…”

Effects of trauma intervention on HIV sexual risk behaviors among women with co‐occurring disorders in substance abuse treatment

“…Data in this article came from participants in the WCDVS Boston study site~Boston Consortium of Services for Families in Recovery, hereafter referred to as BCSFR!, the only site that collected data on HIV risk behaviors.~For a full description of the WCDVS study design, see McHugo, Kammerer, et al, 2005. For a description of the BCSFR model, see !.…”

Does integrated trauma‐informed substance abuse treatment increase treatment retention?

“…History of childhood physical and sexual abuse and history of adult physical and sexual abuse were derived from answers to the LSC-R, and a scale of lifetime exposure to stressful events~LESE! was constructed by summing across all events~McHugo, Caspi, et al 2005!. For the LESẼ n ϭ 430!, Cronbach's alpha was 0.710.…”