ISTSS - International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies

Bringing together clinicians and researchers from around the world to advocate for the field of traumatic stress.

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Healing Trauma Together

The International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies is dedicated to sharing information about the effects of trauma and the discovery and dissemination of knowledge about policy, program and service initiatives that seek to reduce traumatic stressors and their immediate and long-term consequences. ISTSS is an international interdisciplinary professional organization that promotes advancement and exchange of knowledge about traumatic stress.

New Briefing Paper: Global Climate Change and Trauma

Effective and feasible methods for mitigating the impacts of climate change already exist and, if promptly and appropriately implemented, have the potential of preventing trauma for generations. This briefing paper serves to highlight currently available evidence and the evidence and action needed in order to prioritize, promote, and protect the mental health and well-being of people, communities, and societies in the face of climate change.

ISTSS 2021 Award Nominations Open

Nomination Deadline: June 1, 2021

The 2021 Awards Committee, chaired by Andrea Phelps, M. Psych(Clinical), PhD, seeks nominations for this year's awards—including the Lifetime Achievement Award and the recently introduced Innovation Award. We encourage you to consider candidates from countries outside North America as well as within it. ISTSS will recognize award winners at the ISTSS 37th Annual Meeting, which will be held virtually November 2–5, 2021.

Submit Your Empirically Validated Trauma and PTSD Assessments

ISTSS is collecting empirically validated assessments of trauma and PTSD to be included in a peer-reviewed repository on the ISTSS website. From this repository, ISTSS members will have access to select measures, based on copyright/developer terms. If you have a measure that you’d like to be considered for the online ISTSS repository, you may submit it for review.

The Transgenerational Legacy of Totalitarian Regimes: System and Ecology of Trauma

Posted on 04/16/2021 by Elena Cherepanov, PhD, LMHC

This blog piece introduces ground concepts aiming to overcome fragmentation in individual, collective, and transgenerational trauma studies.

Assessment of Reliability and Validity of a German Diagnostic Interview Module for ICD-11 Adjustment Disorder

Posted on 04/09/2021 by Axel Perkonigg, Katja Beesdo-Baum, and Adreas Maercker

Adjustment disorder (AjD) is a relatively frequent mental disorder in various clinical settings and high-risk groups of the general population (Perkonigg et al., 2018). The clinical utility of the AjD diagnosis has been often criticized (e.g., Casey, 2014) and the disorder was under-researched for example due to the fact that few descriptive and analytical epidemiological data were available.

Screening for posttraumatic stress disorder using the PCL-5

Posted on 04/02/2021 by Ashraf Kagee, Adélle Sterley, Wylene Saal, and Jason Batjes

Detecting post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among antiretroviral therapy (ART) users is an important matter in the context of providing public health services. In South Africa, the country with the largest number of persons living with HIV, the prevalence of community violence and its psychological consequences, including PTSD are high. Among both persons seeking an HIV test and persons living with HIV (PLWH), traumatic events and symptoms of posttraumatic stress have been reported in non-trivial proportions.

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Healing Trauma Together

New Briefing Paper: Global Climate Change and Trauma

ISTSS 2021 Award Nominations Open

Nomination Deadline: June 1, 2021

Submit Your Empirically Validated Trauma and PTSD Assessments

Trauma Blog