Relationship between personality traits and prognosis of posttraumatic stress disorder in flood survivors / 中国心理卫生杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To explore the prognosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in flood survivors 13 years after they had been diagnosed with PTSD symptoms,and investigate the relationship between their personality traits and the prognosis of PTSD.Method:In this cross-sectional study,the survivors of Dongting Lake flood in 1998-1999 in Hunan in China,who were investigated and screened as PTSD symptoms positive in 2000 were selected as the target population,from which a sample of 200subjects was drawn using amulti-stage random sampling method.The Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Scale Civilian Version (PCL-C) was used to examine and re-screen the participants of PTSD symptoms in order to explore the prognosis of PTSD.Participants whose PCL-C scores were equal to 44 or higher were classified as the PTSD symptoms positive group,while those with PCL-C scores less than 44 were classified as the recovered group.Personality traits were then assessed,using the Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Short Scale for Chinese (EPQ-RSC),in both the recovered group and the PTSD symptoms positive group.Finally,the multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to investigate the relationship between the prognosis of PTSD and personality traits.Results:Totally 200 subjects were eligible for this study and completed the questionnaires,but 16 of them had their questionnaires excluded from data analysis because they provided incomplete information.Thus,the response rate was 92.0％.According to the PCL-C's cut-off score,22 participants were still screened as PTSD symptoms positive and were classified as the PTSD symptoms positive group,whereas the other 162 participants were screened as PTSD symptoms negative and were classified as the recovered group.Compared with the recovered group,the EPQ-RSC extroversion scores for the PTSD symptoms positive group were significantly lower [(51.8 ± 10.7) vs.(45.1 ± 13.2),P ＜ 0.05] and their neuroticism scores were significantly higher [(46.5 ± 10.1) vs.(58.3 ± 12.2),P ＜ 0.05].The multivariate logistic regression analysis showed,after adjusting for the variables such as gender and age,that higher neuroticism (OR ＝ 3.63,95％ CI1.05 -12.54) was a risk factor for the persistent PTSD symptoms in the flood survivors.Conclusions:It suggests that neuroticism is associated with prognosis of PTSD in flood survivors,those with higher neuroticism scores appear to have problems to recover from PTSD.