Tag Archives: disaster

A Quarter of Cases of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Is With Delayed Onset

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This month’s guest post is by Geert Smid. Geert is a psychiatrist with Foundation Centrum ’45, the Dutch national institute for specialized diagnosis and mental health treatment after persecution, war and violence. He is also a researcher at Arq Psychotrauma Expert Group. Geert completed his PhD on Delayed Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in 2011 with a number of beautiful publications. He’ll make your brain work a little on this very topic:

According to the current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, delayed posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) must be diagnosed in individuals fulfilling criteria for PTSD if the onset of symptoms is at least 6 months after the trauma. The prevalence of delayed PTSD has for a long time remained unclear, and only few studies have examined factors that may explain its occurrence. The findings summarized below are based on prospective investigations in disaster survivors and unaccompanied refugee minors, as well as a comprehensive meta-analysis of prospective studies.

1. About a quarter of PTSD cases is with delayed onset. The results of our meta-analysis showed that delayed PTSD occurs in about one quarter of all PTSD cases. The risk of delayed PTSD did not decrease between 9 and 25 months after the traumatic event, and when traumatized populations were followed up for longer periods of time, more delayed PTSD cases were found. These findings suggest ongoing potential risk for some individuals.

2. During the interval between the trauma and delayed PTSD onset, some symptoms are likely to occur. Delayed PTSD occurred most often in individuals already reporting “subthreshold” symptoms after the traumatic event. These symptoms Continue reading →

Upcoming conferences on trauma and recovery

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A number of interesting conferences take place in the next few months. They all focus on trauma exposure, traumatic stress and mental health. And for three of them submission deadlines are approaching rather quickly… Continue reading →

PhD scholarships at Monash University

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There is an interesting opportunity for young trauma researchers: to do a PhD at Monash University (Melbourne, Australia). Monash Injury Research Institute is a multidisciplinary center, doing research on both the prevention and outcome side of trauma, which may lead to creative cross-overs. Particularly interesting for researchers in psychotraumatology are the topics adolescent refugee mental health, child abuse, disaster resilience, and injury outcomes.

For the full text of the advertisement, see below. Beware that the deadline for expressions of interest is 12 October. Continue reading →

Conference snapshot: update on Japan

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Masaharu Maeda was one of the keynote speakers of the European Conference on Traumatic Stress. He is the president of the Japanese Society for Traumatic Stress Studies and, not surprisingly, heavily involved in helping survivors of the massive earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan in March. Maeda provided some firsthand information about inhabitants’ losses, their reactions to the disaster, and current problems in the shelters.

According to the latest figures, about 15.000 people died and 10.000 people are missing. Because of this large number of missing people and the long and difficult process of retrieving and identifying bodies, many people are still uncertain about the fate of their loved ones. Almost all of them will have died, but there is no confirmation of their death, which makes it difficult to start to mourn; it puts the process of grieving ‘on hold’. Continue reading →