Impaired fear inhibition learning predicts the persistence of symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

Recent cross-sectional studies have shown that the inability to suppress fear under safe conditions is a key problem in people with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The current longitudinal study examined whether individual differences in fear inhibition predict the persistence of PTSD symptoms. Approximately 2 months after deployment to Afghanistan, 144 trauma-exposed Dutch soldiers were administered a conditional discrimination task (AX+/BX-). In this paradigm, A, B, and X are neutral stimuli.

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Heterogeneity in threat extinction learning: substantive and methodological considerations for identifying individual difference in response to stress

Pavlovian threat (fear) conditioning (PTC) is an experimental paradigm that couples innate aversive stimuli with neutral cues to elicit learned defensive behavior in response to the neutral cue. PTC is commonly used as a translational model to study neurobiological and behavioral aspects of fear and anxiety disorders including Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Though PTSD is a complex multi-faceted construct that cannot be fully captured in animals PTC is a conceptually valid model for studying the development and maintenance of learned threat responses.

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If you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far go together : On context-sensitive group treatment of asylum seekers and refugees traumatized by war and terror

Het proefschrift van Boris Drož?ek presenteert een model voor het begrijpen van posttraumatische gevolgen bij asielzoekers en vluchtelingen. Dit model beschouwt deze gevolgen vanuit het levensloopperspectief van de overlevende en inventariseert zowel de psychologische als de psychosociale en maatschappelijke veranderingen in zijn of haar leefwereld. Op basis van dit model is een groepsbehandeling ontworpen. De behandeling richt zich op zowel de bronnen van veerkracht als op de posttraumatische beschadigingen. De resultaten van deze interventie staan centraal in deze thesis.

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Impact of dissociation and interpersonal functioning on inpatient treatment for early sexually abused adults

Little is known about the possible predictors of treatment outcome in early chronically sexually abused adults. The current study aimed to investigate what impact initial levels of dissociation and pre-treatment negative change in interpersonal functioning have on treatment response after 3 months of first-phase trauma inpatient treatment as well as after a period of 1 year the patients returned to their usual lives.

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Helping Elderly Patients to Avoid Suicide : a Review of Case Reports from a National Veterans Affairs Database

This study examines the health system factors associated with completed suicide among veterans older than 65 years. All root cause analysis reports of suicides that occurred between 2008 and 2010 in the Veterans Health Administration were reviewed, of those, 46 reports were for those 65 years or older. The average age in the sample was 76.96 years, all were men. Method of suicide, stressors, previous attempts, root causes, and action plans designed to address the root causes are reported.

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Helping traumatized families

The new edition of the classic Helping Traumatized Families not only offers clinicians a unified, evidence-based theory of the systemic impact of traumatic stressit also details a systematic approach to helping families heal by promoting their natural healing resources. Though the impact of trauma on a family can be growth producing, some families either struggle or fail to adapt successfully.

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Exposure to violence during childhood is associated with telomere erosion from 5 to 10 years of age: a longitudinal study

There is increasing interest in discovering mechanisms that mediate the effects of childhood stress on late-life disease morbidity and mortality. Previous studies have suggested one potential mechanism linking stress to cellular aging, disease and mortality in humans: telomere erosion. We examined telomere erosion in relation to children's exposure to violence, a salient early-life stressor, which has known long-term consequences for well-being and is a major public-health and social-welfare problem.

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Empirical Support for the Definition of a Complex Trauma Event in Children and Adolescents

Complex trauma events have been defined as chronic, interpersonal traumas that begin early in life (Cook, Blaustein, Spinazzola, & van der Kolk, 2003). The complex trauma definition has been examined in adults, as indicated by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., DSM-IV) field trial, however, this research was lacking in child populations. The symptom presentations of complexly traumatized children were contrasted with those exposed to other, less severe trauma ecologies that met 1 or 2 features of the complex trauma definition.

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Epigenetic Transmission of Holocaust Trauma: Can Nightmares Be Inherited?

The Holocaust left its visible and invisible marks not only on the survivors, but also on their children. Instead of numbers tattooed on their forearms, however, they may have been marked epigenetically with a chemical coating upon their chromosomes, which would represent a kind of biological memory of what the parents experienced. as a result, some suffer from a general vulnerability to stress while others are more resilient. Previous research assumed that such transmission was caused by environmental factors, such as the parents' childrearing behavior.

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ESTSS and ISTSS: 'heterozygous twins'

The development of traumatic stress studies during the past decades has much profited from professionals from the United States and from Europe. However, these professional societies, the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies and the European Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ESTSS) still struggle to find an equal common pathway. This is a personal retrospective view of Berthold Gersons, past president of ESTSS on behalf of the 20th anniversary of ESTSS.

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