PTSD symptoms likely common during COVID-19 pandemic
Up to nearly one-fourth of participants of a longitudinal study conducted in Italy exhibited clinically relevant PTSD symptoms during the first 9 months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Although it is known that the COVID-19 pandemic is associated with highly significant levels of psychological distress, the long-term psychological effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have not been tracked, particularly with respect to PTSD symptoms in longitudinal studies among community-dwelling participants,” Antonella Somma, of Vita-Salute San Raffaele University in Italy, and colleagues wrote in Journal of Psychiatric Research. “Against this background, the present study aimed at evaluating the prevalence of PTSD symptoms in a sample of community-dwelling Italian adults who were administered an International Classification of Disease-11th Edition (ICD-11) measure of PTSD 5 days after the quarantine had been enforced in Italy (March 2020; ie, Wave 1), at the end of the quarantine in Italy (June 2020; ie, Wave 2), as well as six months later (December 2020; ie, Wave 3).”
A total of 203 longitudinal study participants from a sample of 811 Italian community-dwelling adults provided data during all three waves of the study. Longitudinal study participants and individuals from the cross-sectional original sample did not differ significantly on age, gender, civil status, educational level, occupation and Italian area of residence. Participants completed at each wave the PTSD scale of the International Trauma Questionnaire (ITQ), DSM-5 measures of acute stress, dissociation, depression and anxiety, as well as a maladaptive personality domain measure at wave one. The researchers instructed participants to answer only ITQ PTSD items in relation to their experiences associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and containment measures.
Results showed a range of 11% to 13% for the point prevalence estimates of COVID-19-related PTSD at each wave; however, up to approximately 23% of participants had clinically relevant PTSD symptoms during 9 months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy. Experiencing internalizing symptoms, such as mostly acute stress, and selected personality features, such as negative affectivity and psychoticism, at wave one represented risk factors for PTSD symptoms at later waves, according to results of multiple logistic regression.
“Our study extended previous knowledge on the COVID-19 pandemic as a posttraumatic stressor providing longitudinal eed for implementing preventive intervention in order to avoid chronic COVID-19 related PTSD, at least among community-dwelling Italian participants,” Somma and colleagues wrote. “Moreover, our findings suggested that maladaptive personality traits assessment may provide clinically-relevant information as to the development of COVID-19-related PTSD.”