The Women, Co-occurring Disorders, and Violence Study (WCDVS) was a large (N = 2729) multisite study of the effectiveness of integrated and trauma-informed services for women with substance use and mental health disorders and a history of interpersonal violence (physical or sexual abuse). Study participants' exposure to lifetime and current traumatic events was assessed at baseline and follow-up via in-person interviews. This article describes the choice of the Life Stressor Checklist-Revised (LSC-R) to assess trauma history to meet the WCDVS's research aims and to respond to consumer input. Quantitative data address the breadth and prevalence of potentially traumatic events in the past and current lives of study participants, the formation and properties of summary measures, and test-retest reliability. Qualitative data address tolerance of the instrument by interviewers and respondents and the generalizability of quantitative findings about trauma prevalence. Finally, recommendations are offered for improvements to the WCDVS version of the LSC-R for use in future research.

Our study indicated that memory of a traumatic event is a strong predictor and a potential risk factor for subsequent development of PTSD. Future studies are needed to show whether these findings can be generalized to other traumatic conditions.

The findings indicate that premorbid personality characteristics, as well as subjective and objective factors related to the traumatic exposure, increased the risk for the development of PTSD.

The suggestion that amnesia regarding the traumatic event may protect against the development of PTSD has both theoretical and practical importance. This review focused on the case of traumatic brain injury as a model for impaired memory for the traumatic event. However, it still remains to be proven that the conclusions based on these findings are generalizable beyond the case of TBI. While some patients with posttraumatic amnesia do develop PTSD despite lack of memory for the traumatic event, the majority of those who lack memory for the event seem to be protected from developing the disorder. Nevertheless, based on this assumption, we suggest that pharmacologic disruption of newly acquired--or even old--traumatic memories, which has been shown to be possible in animals, might therapeutically benefit trauma survivors.