The violence that women in disadvantaged neighborhoods experience and witness can result in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and full diagnoses, according to a new study.
The Northwestern University study of a disadvantaged Chicago neighborhood also found that women with PTSD diagnosis or sub-threshold PTSD had significantly more severe depression symptoms than women in the study who didn’t report experiencing trauma.
Every woman who was recruited for the study had symptoms of depression, the researchers noted.
“There are many women who are affected by shooting and gang violence in these neighborhoods,” said first author Sunghyun Hong, a research assistant at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “These women are often overlooked. With this study, we were able to shine a light on this high prevalence of trauma exposure and PTSD diagnosis among the underserved population.”
The traumatic experiences reported in the study were often violent or sexual in nature. One woman disclosed having witnessed the fatal shooting of her son, and another woman reported seeing her father murdered in her home.
The neighborhood from which women in the study were recruited ranked seventh for property crime, 26th for quality of life crime, and 35th for violent crime among 77 Chicago neighborhoods.
According to the study’s findings, 36 percent of the women had PTSD or sub-threshold PTSD (substantial trauma symptoms that might not have met the full PTSD diagnostic criteria).
[For more of this story, written by Janice Wood, go to http://psychcentral.com/news/2...-to-ptsd/113679.html]
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