ARQ National Psychotrauma Centre

Negative thinking is seen as an important mediating factor in the development of prolonged grief disorder (PGD), a syndrome encompassing debilitating symptoms of grief. No measure of specific grief related cognitions is available yet. Based on an adult measure of negative thinking in adults we developed a questionnaire for children, the Grief Cognitions Questionnaire for Children (GCQ-C).

Happy New Year to our readers around the world – some of them it just started, for others it will soon begin – from the European Journal of Psychotraumatology, the European Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ESTSS) and the team at Taylor and Francis. According to Johan Norberg (here), a popular Swedish author, historian and expert in economic globalization, our progress has been unprecedented.

Use of ED medication can be seen as a marker for ED. ED is associated with increasing age, exposure to traumatic events and physical injuries in military veterans. The objective of this study was to assess the prevalence of use of ED medication in Dutch military personnel in the period 2003–2012 and to assess its association with age and psychotropic medication use. Data on dispensing of ED medication, age and co-medication with psychotropic medication of all Dutch military personnel between 2003 and 2012 were collected.

Following years of ethnic strife between the Hutu majority and Tutsi minority, tensions escalated immediately after the plane of president Habyarimana was shot down on April 6, 1994. The Tutsi were designated scapegoat by Hutu extremists and subjected to a systematic and barbaric genocide. Within a hundred days, approximately 800.000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu were slaughtered. The killings only grinded to a halt when the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a Tutsi rebel militia, seized the last stronghold of the regime on July 17 that same year.

Besides fight and flight responses, animals and humans may respond to threat with freezing, a response characterized by bradycardia and physical immobility. Risk assessment is proposed to be enhanced during freezing to promote optimal decision making. Indeed, healthy participants showed freezing-like responses to threat cues. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) patients are characterized by hypervigilance and increased threat responsiveness.

Exposure to mass trauma may bring about increased sensitivity to new or ongoing stressors. It is unclear whether sensitivity to stress associated with ethnic minority/immigrant status may be affected by severe exposure to mass trauma.

ABSTRACT

Background Hundreds of individuals lost one or more significant others in the MH17 plane crash in 2014 in Ukraine. The current study is the first to explore subgroups of disaster-bereaved individuals based on presence of psychopathology clusters. This may inform the development of diagnostic instruments and tailored interventions.

The first studies on migration and mental health focused primarily on immigration in the Unites States in the beginning of the 20th century. Higher levels of mental health problems or “insanity” were observed among migrants as compared to host populations. Selective migration of mentally ill people was understood to explain this difference. Although hypomanic traits such as impulsiveness, extraversion and risk seeking behaviour may seem to predispose individuals to emigrate, the so-called selective migration hypothesis has never been empirically supported.

Little is known about how age and gender are associated with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and traumatic experiences in treatment-seeking police offers. In this study, we examined 967 diagnostic files of police officers seeking treatment for PTSD. Six hundred twelve (63%) of the referred police officers were diagnosed with PTSD (n = 560) or partial PTSD (n = 52). Police officers reported on average 19.5 different types of traumatic events (range 1-43). Those who experienced a greater variety of traumatic events suffered from more PTSD symptoms.