ARQ National Psychotrauma Centre

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a psychiatric disorder that can develop following exposure to or witnessing of a (potentially) threatening event.

A critical issue is to pinpoint the (neuro)biological mechanisms underlying the susceptibility to stress-related disorder such as PTSD, which develops in the minority of ~15% of individuals exposed to trauma. Over the last few years, a first wave of epigenetic studies has been performed in an attempt to identify the molecular underpinnings of the long-lasting behavioral and mental effects of trauma exposure.

Research showed that more than 30% of patients with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) do not benefit from evidence-based treatments: Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). These are patients with prolonged and multiple traumatization, with poor verbal memory, and patients with emotional over-modulation. Retelling traumatic experiences in detail is poorly tolerated by these patients and might be a reason for not starting or not completing the recommended treatments.

Three and a half decades of research on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has produced substantial knowledge on the pathobiology of this frequent and debilitating disease. However, despite all research efforts, so far no drug that has specifically targeted PTSD core symptoms progressed to clinical use. Instead, although not overly efficient, serotonin re-uptake inhibitors continue to be considered the gold standard of PTSD pharmacotherapy.

The number of children affected by natural disasters each year is alarmingly high and can be expected to rise as climate change continues. The mental consequences have been documented not only in the rates of post-traumatic stress symptoms and post-traumatic stress disorder, but also for depression and other mental health problems.

Ways of dealing with bereavement and grief are influenced by the norms of one’s cultural identity. Cultural assessment of bereavement and grief is therefore needed for a comprehensive evaluation of grief-related psychopathology and for negotiating appropriate treatment. Cultural aspects of bereavement and grief include cultural traditions related to death, bereavement, and mourning as well as help seeking and coping.

The Traumatic Grief Inventory Self-Report version (TGI-SR) is an 18-item self-report measure. It was designed to assess symptoms of Persistent Complex Bereavement Disorder (PCBD) included in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)-5 and Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD) proposed by an international group of experts in grief. The research in this article used data from a bereaved patient sample and people who lost loved ones in the Ukrainian airplane crash in July 2014.

In some cases childbirth leads to negative psychological responses such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) is a common and major complication of childbirth, which occasionally requires emergency hysterectomy in severe cases. Patients often describe these complications as a traumatic experience. It is unknown whether PPH is a risk factor for developing PTSD.

Despite an array of evidence-based psychological treatments for patients with a posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a majority of patients do not fully benefit from the potential of these therapies. In veterans with PTSD, up to two-thirds retain their diagnosis after psychotherapy and often their disorder is treatment-resistant, which calls for improvement of therapeutic approaches for this population. One of the factors hypothesized to underlie low response in PTSD treatment is high behavioral and cognitive avoidance to traumatic reminders.

Background: Psychological resilience is a distinct factor that affects mental health outcomes after adversities. This study describes the development, validity and measurement invariance (MI) of a Dutch and English scale on psychological resilience, called the Resilience Evaluation Scale (RES).

Methods: Separate online surveys with the Dutch and English version of the RES and hypothesized relatedmeasures were distributed in a Dutch- and English-speaking group, both drawn from the general population.

Objectives

Individuals with post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have neurocognitive deficits in verbal memory and executive functioning. In this study, we examined whether memory and executive functioning changed over the course of treatment and which clinical variables were associated with change.

Design

Neuropsychological assessments were administered at baseline and endpoint of a randomized controlled trial as secondary outcome.

Methods