These findings, which are generally consistent with prior reports of reduced hippocampal volume in combat veterans with PTSD, suggest that diminished hippocampal size may be either a consequence of trauma exposure or a risk factor for the development of psychiatric complications following trauma exposure. The observed relationship between symptom severity and hippocampal volume suggests that mesial temporal lobe dysfunction may directly mediate certain aspects of PTSD and dissociative disorder symptomatology.

No abstract

The present study examines the distress symptomatology and family functioning in female undergraduate students who had been sexually victimized in childhood and revictimized in adulthood. This group was contrasted with a child sexual abuse group, peer sexual abuse group, and a no sexual trauma group. Findings indicated that the revictimized group reported the most severe forms of sexual assault relative to other victimized groups. The victimized groups were all significantly more distressed than the nonabused control group with the revictimized group reporting significantly more PTSD symptomatology than other victimization groups. The victimization groups differed significantly from the nonabused group on dimensions of family functioning, but they did not differ significantly from each other. Multiple stepwise regression analysis indicated that conflict and control were significant predictors of distress in the victimization group. Cohesion was a significant predictor of distress in the nonabused group. The clinical implications of the findings are discussed.

Memory impairment has been reported in some studies of patients with combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and in rape victims with PTSD. The authors tested whether explicit memory impairment was evident in adult women who were traumatized by severe sexual abuse in childhood. The California Verbal Learning Test (Delis, Kramer, Kaplan, & Ober, 1987) and the Benton Visual Retention Task (Benton, 1974), were administered to 22 female adult survivors of childhood sexual trauma and to 20 demographically and educationally similar nonvictimized women. No evidence was found of explicit memory impairment in the abuse survivors. Furthermore, neither PTSD severity, dissociative symptom severity, nor extent of preexisting amnesia for childhood trauma contributed to the variance in memory functioning. Additional studies are needed to determine the extent to which impaired explicit memory functioning is a common feature of posttraumatic stress syndromes.