On November 1, 2023, another successful Paper in a Day (PiaD) was held at the ISTSS annual meeting in Los Angeles. The PiaD grew out of a wish to foster collaborations between young researchers from around the world. It is designed to stimulate international connections and the exchange of ideas by working on a tangible outcome: a paper, short communication or commentary for a peer-reviewed journal. The PiaD project aligns with FAIR data principles. The focus of this year’s PiaD was on potential gender differences in early post-trauma PTSD symptoms and symptom cluster networks.
Studies conducted in various countries and among different trauma-exposed populations have shown that women are at increased conditional risk to develop PTSD. Recent studies indicated that, already in the first weeks after a traumatic event, women exhibit more severe trauma and PTSD symptoms than men.
Nevertheless, there is still a limited amount of sex- and gender-sensitive research within our field that adequately addresses differences between women and men in PTSD symptom onset and course. Such research can aid in identifying targets for screening, prevention and treatment.
This year’s PiaD participants consisted of early career researchers from Singapore, Norway, Ghana and the United States, as well as two workshop leaders from the Netherlands. They investigated whether women and men show differences in the network structure of PTSD symptoms and symptom clusters as assessed in the first weeks post-trauma. Two previous studies investigating network structure differences at a later timepoint following trauma found no to modest differences (Birkeland et al., 2017; Gay et al., 2020), indicating that inter-symptom associations do not substantially differ once PTSD has been established. However, it remains currently unknown whether differences do exist within the early post-trauma period.
To address this question, baseline data of the ongoing prospective cohort study of the 2-ASAP (Towards Accurate Screening and Prevention of PTSD) research consortium, located in the Netherlands, was used. Adult participants (N = 475) completed a self-report baseline assessment within 60 days of their exposure to a recent traumatic experience. The 5-factor PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 Dysphoric Arousal model (Gentes et al., 2015) was used in the main network analyses. The full scientific paper containing the results will be submitted in early 2024.
Participants:
PiaD leaders: Mirjam van Zuiden and Anke Witteveen (the Netherlands)
PiaD attendees: Jordan Thomas (USA), Jessy Guler (USA), Joana Kyei (Ghana), Jianlin Liu (Republic of Singapore), Rachel Zelkowitz (USA), Linne Rønning (Norway), Marilyn Piccirillo (USA)
About the authors
Anke B. Witteveen is Assistant Professor, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Department of Clinical, Neuro- and Developmental Psychology, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Mirjam van Zuiden is Assistant Professor, Utrecht University, Department of Clinical Psychology, Utrecht, the Netherlands.
References
Birkeland, M. S., Blix, I., Solberg, Ø., & Heir, T. (2017). Gender differences in posttraumatic
stress symptoms after a terrorist attack: A network approach. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 2091.
Gay, N. G., Wisco, B. E., Jones, E. C., & Murphy, A. D. (2020). Posttraumatic stress disorder
symptom network structures: A comparison between men and women. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 33(1), 96-105.
Gentes E, Dennis PA, Kimbrel NA, et al. (2015). Latent Factor Structure of DSM-5 Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Psychopathology Review. a2(1):17-29. doi:10.5127/pr.035914