Integration and organization of trauma memories and posttraumatic symptoms

• Published in: Journal of traumatic stress 2011-12, Vol.24 (6), p.716-725
• Main Authors: O'Kearney, Richard, Hunt, Aliza, Wallace, Nancy
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Adult and adolescent clinical studies; Anxiety disorders. Neuroses; Biological and medical sciences; Female; Humans; Male; Medical sciences; Memory; Post traumatic stress disorder; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic - physiopathology; Surveys and Questionnaires; Wounds and Injuries - psychology; Young Adult
• ISSN: 0894-9867; 1573-6598
• DOI: 10.1002/jts.20690

To examine the connection between trauma memory integration in personal memory, memory organization, and posttraumatic symptom severity, 47 trauma‐exposed adults undertook an event‐cuing task for their trauma memory and for a memorable nontraumatic negative event. Measures of integration provided by self‐endorsement, rated by naïve judges, or calculated from the language of the memories, did not significantly predict posttraumatic stress disorder symptom severity after adjusting for age, time since the event, anxiety when disclosing, familiarity of the memory, and integration of nontrauma memory. Less use of casual connectives in the trauma memory narrative was associated with higher trauma‐related avoidance (r = .33; p = .03), whereas self‐rating of the trauma memory as disorganized was associated with higher overall symptom severity (r = .42; p = .006). Traditional and Simplified Chinese s by AsianSTSS