Relationship Between Traumatic Events And Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), And Psychological Characteristics, Cognitive Function And Psychobio-chemistry Of PTSD Among Female Inmates

OBJECTIVE: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has previously been documented within various traumatized groups in western countries. In the present study, the authors investigated the relationship between frequency and type of traumatic events and the prevalence of PTSD from various aspects of research such as epidemilogy, psychology, cognitive function and psychobiochemitry among female inmates in China.METHODS: (1) A structured psychiatric interview, self-report Traumatic Life Events Questionnaire, Impact of Event Scale-Revised, Symptom Checklist-90-Revised, Social Supporting Rating Scale, Trait Coping Style Questionnaire, Eysenck's Personality Questionnaire-Adults and Suicide Questionnaire were administered to a subset of 471 female members who were randomly selected from Hunan New Road Occupational School, in Hunan female prison, China. DSM-IV diagnoses were assigned by consensus after the interviews were evaluated by independent assessors. (2) Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, Wechsler Memory Scale, Verbal Fluency Test and Attention Test were administed by 47 female inmates with PTSD and 36 age-, education-, histories of substance abuse-and incarcerating time-matched controls. The plasma catecholamine (DA, NE, E), 5-HT, neuropeptide-Y (NPY) levels and the serum cortisol level were detected by immunoradiometric assay or high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC-ED). Partial correlations between psychobio-chemiry and cognitive function and IES-R were analyzed.RESULTS: (1) The prevalence of current PTSD was 10.6%(N=50) and 90.4% of the subjects (N=426) had experienced at least one traumatic...