| Description |
Background: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a high burden disorder marked by safety behaviors (SB), which are covert or overt actions used to escape distressing feelings or places. However, literature suggests scores on observer-rated and self-reported SBs can be discrepant, creating a need to examine if this discrepancy exists in those who have had a traumatic exposure or in those with both trauma exposure and significant PTSD symptoms, to examine how SBs may present in PTSD and trauma. We expect that the presence of significant PTSD symptoms will be correlated with greater SBs and will result in a greater discrepancy between these two types of SB reporting standards. Methods: We used an analysis of variance (ANOVA) to examine difference scores between an observer-rated measure of SBs performed by participants exposed to trauma-related videos and a self-reported measure of SBs at baseline. This was done across three groups: individuals with no trauma exposure (n= 77), those with trauma exposure but minimal symptoms (n= 49) and those with trauma exposure and likely PTSD (n=24). Results: PTSD symptoms were correlated with self-reported SBs (r = .44, p<.001), but not observer-rated SBs (r = -.15, p=.30). The ANOVA revealed a significant difference between self-reported and observer-rated SBs for those with probable PTSD compared to the other groups, who did not show this discrepancy between types of SBs (F(2,101) =3.53, p= .03), such that those with likely PTSD had greater self-reported SBs than observer-rated SBs. Conclusions: We found that individuals with probable PTSD showed significant discrepancy in types of SBs, which suggests SBs may be more covert for individuals with PTSD and harder for observers to spot in clinical or research settings, highlighting that SBs may differ in those with PTSD and emphasizing the need to provide education on how individuals with PTSD may mask their avoidance. |
