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New Research Reveals COVID-19 Traumatic Stress May Predict PTSD, Particularly for People with a History of Trauma [news.gsu.edu]

 

By Jennifer Rainey Marquez, Georgia State University News, January 21, 2022

The pandemic has taken a substantial toll on mental health — and for a subset of Americans, COVID has emerged as a source of traumatic stress that may predict post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, according to a new study led by Georgia State University. The research shows that the association between COVID traumatic stress and PTSD is stronger among individuals who have repeated experiences of past trauma. The findings were true across racial groups, with the exception of Asian Americans.

“While many people are insulated from deaths and economic hardships related to the pandemic, there is a universal experience of fear, concern for others and social isolation,” said Jeff Ashby, the study’s lead author, professor of counseling and psychological services in the College of Education & Human Development and co-director of the Center for Stress, Trauma and Resilience. “Among our findings is that the experience of COVID-19 is a traumatic stress. It isn’t just triggering earlier trauma, it’s a traumatic experience in and of itself.”

For the study, which was published in the Journal of Community Psychology, the researchers surveyed 745 individuals to examine the potential interaction of race/ethnicity, COVID‐19 traumatic stress and cumulative trauma in the prediction of PTSD symptoms. They used a recently validated COVID‐19 Traumatic Stress Scale to measure the pandemic’s impact as related to the threat or fear of infection and death.

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