ARQ Centrum’45 (en)

AbstractBackground: A lack of social support and recognition by the environment is one of the most consistent risk factors for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and PTSD patients will recover faster with proper social support. The oxytocin system has been proposed to underlie beneficial effects of social support as it is implicated in both social bonding behavior and reducing stress responsivity, notably amygdala reactivity (Koch et al., 2014, Olff et al., 2010, Olff, 2012).

AbstractBackground: Despite national and international policies to develop social capital in disaster-affected communities, empiric evidence on the association between social capital and disaster mental health is limited and ambiguous.Objective: The study explores the relationship between social capital and disaster mental health outcomes (PTSD, anxiety, and depression) in combination with individual factors (appraisal, coping behavior, and social support).Design: This is a community-based cross-sectional study in a flood-affected town in northern England.

Background: Despite national and international policies to develop social capital in disaster-affected communities, empiric evidence on the association between social capital and disaster mental health is limited and ambiguous.Objective: The study explores the relationship between social capital and disaster mental health outcomes (PTSD, anxiety, and depression) in combination with individual factors (appraisal, coping behavior, and social support).Design: This is a community-based cross-sectional study in a flood-affected town in northern England.

Disturbed sleep is one of the key symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and may contribute to the genesis and maintenance of PTSD. Our previously published study*, executed in healthy subjects, suggests that adaptive changes occur in sleep architecture, after emotional experiences, that benefit emotional housekeeping and the attenuation of emotional responses to negative emotional experiences. Little is known, however, about the relation between sleep and emotional memory processing in PTSD.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating psychiatric disorder. An important diagnostic feature of PTSD is anhedonia, which may result from deficits in reward functioning. This has however never been studied systematically in PTSD. To determine if PTSD is associated with reward impairments, we conducted a systematic review of studies in which reward functioning was compared between PTSD patients and healthy control participants, or investigated in relation to PTSD symptom severity.

Objective: The development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is influenced by preexisting vulnerability factors. The authors aimed at identifying a preexisting biomarker representing a vulnerability factor for the development of PTSD. To that end, they determined whether the dexamethasone binding capacity of leukocytes, as a measure of glucocorticoidreceptor (GR) number, before exposure to trauma was a predictor of development of PTSD symptoms.

AbstractA substantial minority of individuals exposed to severe or traumatic stress subsequently develops long-lasting mental or physical health problems, which may severely impair daily functioning. These stress-related conditions include posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), major depressive disorder (MDD) and severe fatigue. Military personnel deployed to combat zones are particularly at risk for the development of these conditions.

Deployed soldiers are at risk of developing stress-related conditions, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), major depressive disorder (MDD), and severe fatigue. We previously observed condition- and cell-specific differences in sensitivity of immune cells for regulation by glucocorticoids (GCs) pre-deployment between male soldiers with and without subsequent development of high levels of these stress-related symptoms. Here we investigated whether these pre-deployment dysregulations in GC-sensitivity of immune cells persisted after return from military deployment.

This chapter contains sections titled: Traumatic Stress: History, Research, and TreatmentPTG in the Netherlands

Background: Stress sensitization, i.e., increased responsiveness to stressful life events has been found in high trauma exposed adults within the first 18 months following trauma exposure (Smid et al., 2012) as well as in young children (Grasso, Ford, & Briggs-Gowan, 2012). However, it is unclear whether stress sensitization may persist over time. We hypothesized that soldiers exposed to high levels of early life trauma would be at risk of persistence of stress sensitization 2 years following deployment.