ARQ National Psychotrauma Centre

This paper outlines the state of affairs in psychobiological research on psychotrauma and PTSD with a focus on the role of the oxytocin system in traumatic stress. With a high prevalence of trauma and PTSD in the Netherlands, new preventive and therapeutic interventions are needed.

Which journal should I choose for the publication of my research? Which indicators of quality are important? How do I best reach a wide and international audience? Which journal within my field has most impact or the highest Impact Factor?

The Children's Revised Impact of Event Scale (CRIES-13) is a brief self-report measure designed to screen children for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This study investigates the psychometric properties of a Dutch version of the CRIES-13–parent version and evaluates its correlation with the child version. A sample of 59 trauma-exposed children (8 years–18 years) and their parents completed an assessment including the CRIES-13 (child/parent version) along with the Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule for DSM-IV: Parent version. Results demonstrated good internal consistency (?

TO THE EDITOR: We read with interest the article by Cozza et al. on the accuracy of DSM-5 persistent complex bereavement disorder criteria (1).The study suggests that complicated grief criteria are more sensitive in detecting cases with griefrelated symptoms than persistent complex bereavement disorder or prolonged grief disorder criteria, without compromising specificity.However,we feel that the article’s findings fail to prove superiority of the complicated grief criteria set.

There exists a general consensus that prolonged grief disorder (PGD), or some variant of PGD, represents a distinct mental disorder worthy of diagnosis and treatment. Nevertheless, confusion remains over whether different names and proposed symptom criteria for this disorder identify the same or different diagnostic entities.

Summary

It is clinically well known that olfactory intrusions in PTSD can be a disabling phenomena due to the involuntary recall of odor memories. Odorants can trigger involuntary recall of emotional memories as well have the potential to help diminishing emotional arousal as grounding stimuli. Despite major advances in our understanding of the function of olfactory system, the study of the relation of olfaction and emotional memory is still relatively scarce.

Dr Halvorsen quite rightly draws attention to the various definitions of clinically significant change, which all have their advantages and disadvantages. We especially agree with the comment that the threshold for clinically significant change should at least coincide with the threshold for reliable change (18.66 in our sample).

Objectives: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a significant health problem with as key symptoms aversive memory intrusions and overgeneralization of the traumatic event, as well as sleep disturbances. Interestingly, sleep has an important role in memory consolidation. In particular, sleep spindles in different cortical areas reflect reprocessing and consolidation of specific memory traces. Given their strong relationship with memory reprocessing during sleep and reported memory and sleep alterations in PTSD, sleep spindles may play a role in the aetiology of PTSD.