Citation

Sunderland M, Carragher N, Chapman C, Mills K, Teesson M, Lockwood E, Forbes D, Slade T. J. Anxiety Disord. 2016; 38: 102-109.

Affiliation

NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in Mental Health and Substance Use, National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, UNSW Australia, Sydney, Australia.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.janxdis.2016.02.001

PMID

26874292

Abstract

The experience of traumatic events has been linked to the development of psychopathology. Changing perspectives on psychopathology have resulted in the hypothesis that broad dimensional constructs account for the majority of variance across putatively distinct disorders. As such, traumatic events may be associated with several disorders due to their relationship with these broad dimensions rather than any direct disorder-specific relationship. The current study used data from 8871 Australians to test this hypothesis. Two broad dimensions accounted for the majority of relationships between traumatic events and mental and substance use disorders. Direct relationships remained between post-traumatic stress disorder and six categories of traumatic events in the total population and between drug dependence and accidents/disasters for males only. These results have strong implications for how psychopathology is conceptualized and offer some evidence that traumatic events are associated with an increased likelihood of experiencing psychopathology in general.

Language: en