Adult reactions to multiple trauma

Abstract

This study aims to explore the relationship between intrusion and avoidance symptoms as described in the diagnostic category in the DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association, 1994) and frequency and level of exposure to traumatogenic events. The effects of lay counselling after the event were taken into account in the analysis, and the sample consisted of voluntary First National Bank employees, who were exposed to more than one bank robbery between December 1989 and 1992. The hypotheses of the study were that an increasing number of exposures to potentially traumatogenic events, and increasing levels of exposure to potentially traurnatoqenic events would be related to the development of avoidant and intrusion symptoms. Further, it was hypothesised that the interaction of these two variables would also be significantly related to the development of avoidant and intrusive symptoms and the nature of this interaction was explored. The scale used to measure the symptoms was the impact of Events Scale (Horowitz, 1979). Level of exposure was measured on a four point scale, which included extreme exposure with physical injury; direct threat and coafrontatlon: indirect contact with the perpetrators, and the fourth category was indirect exposure, or secondary victimisation. The results indicated that level of exposure had a significant relationship with the development of both intrusion and avoidance symptoms. Contrary to expectations, frequency of exposure was not found to be related to symptomology and it was speculated that this might have been because of the crudeness of the measure. In this regard it is of note that level of exposure as measured in this study included frequency of exposure. The results indicated further that post trauma counselling was not significantly related to symptomology. The implications of these findings were discussed in the light of the general literature in PTSD.