Evaluating traumatic event scoring schemas for their predictive value to concurrent diagnostic profiles: Texas Childhood Trauma Research Network.

Background: To prospectively chart pathways of risk and resiliency following childhood trauma studies need to address three limitations of prior work: 1) recruit beyond social service/ treatment settings; 2) include broad spectrum of trauma types and 3) cast a broad longitudinal measurement framework of both clinical diagnoses and traumatic exposures. The Texas-Childhood Trauma Research Network (TX-CTRN) is a multi-site collaboration that addresses these limitations. In this baseline-only report, we examined domains of trauma and evaluated the concurrent predictive validity of various traumatic event scoring schemas for clinical diagnoses.

Structural equation modeling of treatment-related changes in neural connectivity for youth with PTSD.

Background: Previous studies suggest that improvement in symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is accompanied by changes in neural connectivity, however, few studies have investigated directional (effective) connectivity. The current study assesses treatment-related changes in effective connectivity in youth with PTSD undergoing Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT).

Methods: Functional MRI scans before and after 16 weeks of TF-CBT for 20 youth with PTSD, or the same time interval for 20 healthy controls (HC) were included in the analysis.