Distress and post‐traumatic stress disorders in high risk professionals: adult attachment style and the dimensions of anxiety and avoidance

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between adult attachment and psychological distress in a population of 544 people working for a security company and for the Belgian Red Cross. The results indicate that fearful-avoidant and preoccupied attached individuals report more stress than secure attached and insecure attached individuals of the dismissive type. Next, the same attachment styles appear to differentiate between individuals who do and individuals who do not develop a post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) after being confronted with a critical incident. Breaking the attachment styles into the two underlying dimensions of attachment anxiety and avoidance, our results suggest that anxiety is more of an issue than avoidance in psychological distress and the occurrence of PTSD.

Traumatic Events, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Attachment Style, and Working Alliance in a Sample of People With Psychosis

“…This finding suggests that associations between stressful life events and insecure attachment that have previously been identified (Waters et al, 2000) may generalize to samples of people with a diagnosis of psychosis and substance misuse. We found predicted associations between anxious attachment and PTSD that support findings in nonclinical samples (Declercq and Willemsen, 2006). This is cross-sectional study, and therefore, we cannot state with confident the direction of influence nor rule out associations being due to a third unmeasured variable.…”

“…Avoidant attachment has been associated with a tendency to underreport distress (Dozier and Lee, 1995), thus obscuring any possible positive associations between interpersonal trauma, PTSD, and avoidant attachment. Previous research with nonclinical samples has similarly failed to find evidence of associations between attachment avoidance and PTSD (Declercq and Willemsen, 2006). The defensive style associated with avoidant attachment may provide a short-term coping mechanism for coping with feelings of distress.…”

“…In turn, insecure attachment styles have been shown to increase vulnerability to PTSD following later experiences of trauma (Declercq and Willemsen, 2006). However, to our knowledge, there are no studies investigating associations between trauma, posttraumatic symptoms, and attachment in people with a diagnosis of psychosis.…”

Critical Incident, Adult Attachment Style, and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Comparison of Three Groups of Security Workers

“…Zakin, Solomon, and Neria (2003) found that the attachment style had a direct main effect and was inversely related to PTSD and psychiatric symptomatology in a group of war veterans. Declercq and Willemsen (2006) found that fearful-avoidant and anxious-preoccupied attached individuals reported more stress than did securely attached and insecurely attached individuals of the dismissive type. The adult attachment styles appeared to differentiate between individuals who do or do not develop posttraumatic stress syndrome after being confronted with a critical incident.…”

Generalized Multiplicative Model for Predicting Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder After Natural Disasters: Theoretical Considerations

“…There is some evidence to support this hypothesis, showing that emotion regulation strategies mediate the association between secure attachment and lower levels of PTSD symptoms [38]. Research has consistently shown that secure attachment is negatively associated with the subsequent development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in a variety of adult trauma victims [39].…”