Trauma narratives and emotional processing

Abstract

The present study examined the relations between indicators of emotional processing (e.g. trauma narratives), posttraumatic stress symptoms, and psychological distress in two military samples (N = 120) exposed to significant training accidents. Trauma narratives were collected at 2-3 weeks, while outcome measures (e.g. IES-15, PTSS-10, and GHQ-30) were collected at 2-3 weeks, and 4 months after the accidents. Emotional processing was indexed by the content of positive and negative emotional expressions in the trauma narratives. The results showed that positive emotional expressions were associated with lower levels of psychological distress, whereas negative emotional expressions were linked to trauma specific symptoms and psychological distress at 2-3 weeks. Negative emotional expressions explained between 6-8% of the variance in trauma specific symptoms at 2-3 weeks, and 11% of the variance in psychological distress symptoms at 4 months after the traumatic event.

Language Use and PTSD Symptoms: Content Analyses of Allegations of Child Sexual Abuse

“…According to the literature on adults (Brewin & Holmes, 2003;Stein, Trabasso, & Albro, 2001), our data suggest that the narratives of traumatized children are structured on the non-processing of negative emotions: in our study, children with PTSD symptoms reported their traumatic experiences with a greater amount of negative emotions, which are manifested through a wide range of shades (such as anger, sadness, shame, guilt, and disgust; Lee, Scragg, & Turner, 2001), not only with the "standard" PTSD emotions of fear, helplessness, and horror (Grey & Holmes, 2008;Holmes et al, 2005). This result confirms previous studies on adults (Boals & Rubin, 2011;Rubin et al, 2004;Rullkoetter et al, 2009), in which the higher use of negative emotions indicates a more immersion in the traumatic event (Eid, Johnson, & Saus, 2005).…”

Psychometric properties of the Norwegian Impact of Event Scale-Revised in a non-clinical sample

“…Since psychometric properties of the IES-R may differ from one population to another (clinical vs. non-clinical samples), and potentially from one type of threatening situational context to another, the factor structure may differ as a function of the population under study and/or the severity of situational stress experienced. This is particularly relevant when measuring post-traumatic stress symptoms, which, according to previous studies usually develop over time as a function of individual adaptation and processing of traumatic memories (23,24). The sensitivity of the IES is also important when used to detect potential clinical from non-clinical cases.…”

Narrative characteristics of genocide testimonies predict posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms years later.

“…Using the text analysis program Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC: (Pennebaker et al, 2007) researchers have found some support for the hypothesis that individuals who produce trauma narratives with proportionally more negative emotional expression and more body state and sensory/perceptual words are more likely to report PTSD symptoms (Alvarez?Conrad, Zoellner, & Foa, 2001; Beaudreau, 2007; Eid, Johnsen, & Saus, 2005; Jones et al, 2007). Overall word use was mixed, with one study finding that participants who used more words in their trauma narratives reported fewer PTSD symptoms (Beaudreau, 2007), and another study finding no association between the number of words used and PTSD symptoms (Alvarez?Conrad et al, 2001).…”

“…Overall word use was mixed, with one study finding that participants who used more words in their trauma narratives reported fewer PTSD symptoms (Beaudreau, 2007), and another study finding no association between the number of words used and PTSD symptoms (Alvarez?Conrad et al, 2001). One limitation of these existing studies is that most were cross-sectional, and the two that investigated these relationships longitudinally had relatively short follow-up periods of three (Jones et al, 2007) to four months (Eid et al, 2005), making it difficult to discern the temporal relationship between narrative characteristics in trauma narratives and PTSD symptoms.…”

“…One study has investigated whether narrative characteristics differentially predict intrusion, hyperarousal, and avoidance symptoms, and found that negative emotion positively predicted intrusion but not avoidance symptoms (Eid et al, 2005). However, the analyses were bivariate correlations that did not take into account the likely overlapping variance between intrusion and avoidance symptoms.…”