The 20 most influential papers on posttraumatic stress

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Which papers have shaped your thoughts on traumatic stress and recovery? Which articles do you often refer to? These questions will be the starting point for the next #traumaresearch chat on Twitter in exactly a week (March 28th in the US, 29th in Australia; see your local time).

 

Meanwhile, I have had a look at which publications have been most influential in terms of citations. For the methods (e.g., I have excluded articles focused on measures), see below. These are the most cited papers, with links to free full-text pdfs or abstracts:

  1. Kessler et al. (1995) Posttraumatic stress disorder in the national comorbidity survey. Archives of General Psychiatry. 3437 citations
  2. Breslau et al. (1991) Traumatic events and posttraumatic stress disorder in an urban population of young adults. Archives of General Psychiatry. 1181 citations
  3. Kendall-Tackett et al. (1993) Impact of sexual abuse on children: A review and synthesis of recent empirical studies. Psychological Bulletin. 981 citations
  4. Ehlers & Clark (2000) A cognitive model of posttraumatic stress disorder. Behaviour Research and Therapy. 978 citations               Continue reading →

Psychological support after the bus crash in Switzerland

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Yesterday was a day of national mourning in Belgium because of a tragic bus accident in Switzerland on Tuesday night. A bus with primary school children and their teachers, returning from a ski trip, had crashed into a tunnel wall near Sion. It caused the loss of 22 children and six adults. All other occupants (24 children) were injured.

It feels needless to say that this accident has a dramatic impact on the Belgian community, including the survivors, their families, their classmates, teachers, neighbors, involved professionals, and fellow citizens. The contrast between the children’s cheerful experiences during a week of skiing and the sudden devastation of lives couldn’t be more pronounced.

Erik de Soir, a Belgian crisis psychologist, provided support to the parents and teachers of the children from the moment the news reached one of the two schools involved. In an interview on the Dutch television on Thursday, he told about his experiences and the strategies for psychological support in the direct aftermath of mass trauma, in line with the current scientific evidence. I was very impressed with the genuine way he described his work and his views. Continue reading →

Posttraumatic growth: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?

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This Thursday the live #traumaresearch chat on Twitter (10am Amsterdam; 8pm Melbourne) will be about posttraumatic growth. We’ll discuss the recent literature review by Meyerson et al.

Feel free to join us for the full hour or part of it, as an active participant or just by reading the comments. If you would like to participate but have no Twitter experience yet: have a look at this Twitter for Trauma Researchers video, it will explain you how to get started.

What is posttraumatic growth? In short, it is “Positive change experienced as a result of the struggle with trauma”. Or, in non-academic terms, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” (Nietsche). Examples are feeling more connected to friends and family, having a clearer view of life priorities, or simply enjoying ‘the little things’ more.

As with many things in trauma research, there is quite an amount of work done with adults but far less knowledge on the experience of children and adolescents. Meyerson and colleagues summarize the findings of all articles and dissertations they could identify: 25 studies. Continue reading →

Next #traumaresearch chat: Posttraumatic Growth

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In a week (Thursday 15th) the next #traumaresearch Paper Discussion on Twitter will take place. You are very welcome to join this international exchange of ideas on recent studies, either as an ‘observer’ or as an active participant. This edition’s topic will be Posttraumatic Growth, more specifically the systematic review by Myerson and colleagues (2011).

Later this week I’ll post a few reflections on the topic but for now I’ll give you the abstract of the paper as a warming-up exercise :-).

“Stress and trauma research has traditionally focused on negative sequelae of adversity. Recently, research has begun to focus on positive outcomes, specifically posttraumatic growth (PTG) – ‘positive change experienced as a result of the struggle with trauma’ – which emphasizes the transformative potential of one’s experiences with highly stressful events and circumstances. The positive changes of PTG are generally thought to occur in five domains: new possibilities, relating to others, personal strength, appreciation of life, and spiritual change. Continue reading →

Epidemiology: A valuable way to study individual differences in risk and resiliency?

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This guest post is by Odilia Laceulle. Odilia is finishing her PhD project at the Interdisciplinary Center for Psychiatric Epidemiology (UMC Groningen, with Prof. Ormel). She focuses on the influence of stressful life events on temperament and stress-reactivity during adolescence using data from the large cohort study TRAILS (TRacking Adolescents’ Individual Lifes Survey).

It is no surprise that many children and adolescents we see in clinical practice need help after being exposed to severe stress. However, not all children who are exposed to stress seek clinical help; some are able to cope with severe stress without therapy. But what defines the impact of severe stressors and who can cope with traumatic events and who cannot? And are all children at equal risk of getting exposed to these events, or can we distinguish factors that predict the likelihood of becoming a victim?  Continue reading →