Background

Childhood trauma (CT) is associated with severe sequelae, including stress-related mental health disorders that can perpetuate long into adulthood. A key mechanism in this relationship seems to be emotion regulation. We aimed to investigate (1) whether childhood trauma is associated with anger in adulthood, and, if so, (2) to explore which types of childhood trauma predominate in the prediction of anger in a cohort that included participants with and without current affective disorders.

Methods

People commonly face adverse circumstances throughout life, which increases risk for psychiatric disorders, such as anxiety, depression, psychosis, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Adversities may occur during different periods in life. Especially adversity during early periods has been suggested to put individuals at risk for adverse mental health outcomes. Here, we investigated whether timing of adversity during the prenatal period, childhood, or mid-to-late adulthood differentially impacted classification into late adulthood symptom profiles.

Background: Exposure to adversity in utero is thought to increase susceptibility to develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following later life trauma, due to neurobiological programming effects during critical developmental periods. It remains unknown whether effects of prenatal adversity on PTSD susceptibility are modulated by genetic variations in neurobiological pathways implicated in PTSD susceptibility.

Background: This study was an examination of the puzzling finding that people assessed for symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) consistently score higher on the self-report PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5) than the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale for DSM-5 (CAPS-5). Both scales purportedly assess PTSD severity with the same number of items, scaling, and scoring range, but differences in scores between measures make outcomes difficult to decipher.