The significance of addressing trauma in outpatient psychiatry
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Date
2004
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Nordic Journal of Psychiatry
Abstract
Establishing post-traumatic stress disorder as a psychiatric diagnosis has only marginally
increased awareness of traumatic experiences. Traumas are inconsistently recorded in initial
psychiatric histories and, when observed, rarely reflected in the primary diagnosis and
treatment. The present study aimed to investigate if there is an association between sufficiently
addressing trauma and long-term outcome and what factors affect whether trauma, according to
the patient’s view, is sufficiently addressed or not. Socio-demographic data, experiences of
trauma and treatment, and outcome, were collected retrospectively from Arabic, Iranian,
Turkish and Swedish patients, who had visited a psychiatric clinic 3 /4 years earlier. Fifty-one
patients whose traumatic experiences had been sufficiently addressed were compared with 39
patients who perceived that their traumas had not been addressed. Logistic regression analyses
were performed to examine relationships between clinical variables and whether or not traumas
had been addressed. Patients with trauma sufficiently addressed reported high confidence in
staff (odds ratio, OR /7.2, pB/0.001), high self-rated health (OR /8.0, pB/0.01) and low scores
on the Self-rating Inventory for PTSD (OR /7.7, pB/0.05) and Depression Scale (OR /3.0,
pB/0.15). Reporting less than five different traumas (OR /4.6, pB/0.01) and being an ethnic
Swede (OR /2.4, pB/0.10) were the background variables independently related to having
trauma sufficiently addressed. Addressing trauma may improve patients’ confidence in staff,
self-rated health and trauma-related symptoms. Multiplicity of traumas and belonging to an
ethnic minority implied that trauma was less addressed.
Description
Keywords
Trauma, Outpatient psychiatry
Citation
Al-saffar, S., Borgå, P., Lawoko, S., Edman, G., & Hällström, T. (2004). The significance of addressing trauma in outpatient psychiatry. Nordic Journal of Psychiatry , 58 (4), 305-312. DOI: 10.1080/08039480410005828