Trauma exposure and stress-related disorders in African-American women with diabetes mellitus.

Objective: The purpose of the study was to assess demographic features, rates of trauma exposure, prevalence of post-traumatic stress and depressive symptoms in a group of urban, low-income, African-American women with type 1 or type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Research Design And Methods: We conducted a survey of (n = 290) low-income, African-American women seeking care in the diabetes clinic of an urban hospital and collected data on the demographic characteristics, childhood and nonchildhood abuse trauma exposure, and the severity of post-traumatic stress and depressive symptoms using the Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Symptom Scale (PSS) and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). In a subset of women with type 2 diabetes (n = 96), we assessed haemoglobin A1c to examine the relationship between psychopathology and glycaemic control.

Emotion dysregulation is associated with increased prospective risk for chronic PTSD development.

While emotion dysregulation is associated with many psychological disorders, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), it remains uncertain whether pre-existing emotion dysregulation increases individual risk for prospectively developing PTSD in the aftermath of trauma exposure. Thus, the objective of the current study was to determine whether emotion dysregulation could prospectively predict the development of chronic PTSD symptoms following a traumatic event above and beyond other known associated factors, including depressive symptoms, baseline PTSD symptoms, total traumas experienced, and exposure to interpersonal trauma. Participants (N = 135) were recruited from the emergency department (ED) at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta and follow-up assessments were conducted at 1-, 3-, 6-, and 12-months following trauma exposure.