Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic

Publication Title: 
Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic

A new retrospective interview assessment of childhood psychological abuse, an extension to the Childhood Experience of Care and Abuse (CECA) instrument, is described in a companion article (Moran, Bifulco, Ball, Jacobs, & Benaim, 2002). The purpose of the present article is to examine the relationship of childhood psychological abuse to other adverse childhood experiences and to major depression and suicidal behavior in adult life. Childhood experience and lifetime disorder were assessed retrospectively in a high-risk, community series of London women (n = 204).

Author(s): 
Bifulco, Antonia
Moran, Patricia M.
Baines, Rebecca
Bunn, Amanda
Stanford, Katherine
Publication Title: 
Journal of Traumatic Stress

The present study investigated the relationship between posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and emotional eating in a sample of medically healthy and medication-free adults. Participants with PTSD (n†= 44) and control participants free of lifetime psychiatric history (n†= 49) completed a measure of emotional eating. Emotional eating is the tendency to eat or overeat in response to negative emotions. PTSD participants exhibited greater emotional eating than control participants (?(2) †= .20) and emotional eating increased with higher PTSD symptom severity (R(2) †= .11).

Author(s): 
Talbot, Lisa S.
Maguen, Shira
Epel, Elissa S.
Metzler, Thomas J.
Neylan, Thomas C.
Publication Title: 
Biological Psychiatry

BACKGROUND: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with increased risk for age-related diseases and early mortality. An accelerated rate of biological aging could contribute to this increased risk. To investigate, we assessed leukocyte telomere length (LTL), an emerging marker of biological age, in men and women with and without PTSD. We also examined childhood trauma, a risk factor for both PTSD and short LTL, as a potential contributor to short LTL in PTSD.

Author(s): 
O'Donovan, Aoife
Epel, Elissa
Lin, Jue
Wolkowitz, Owen
Cohen, Beth
Maguen, Shira
Metzler, Thomas
Lenoci, Maryann
Blackburn, Elizabeth
Neylan, Thomas C.
Publication Title: 
Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology

DHEA and DHEAS are steroids synthesized in human adrenals, but their function is unclear. In addition to adrenal synthesis, evidence also indicates that DHEA and DHEAS are synthesized in the brain, further suggesting a role of these hormones in brain function and development. Despite intensifying research into the biology of DHEA and DHEAS, many questions concerning their mechanisms of action and their potential involvement in neuropsychiatric illnesses remain unanswered.

Author(s): 
Maninger, Nicole
Wolkowitz, Owen M.
Reus, Victor I.
Epel, Elissa S.
Mellon, Synthia H.
Publication Title: 
Biological Psychiatry

BACKGROUND: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with increased risk for age-related diseases and early mortality. An accelerated rate of biological aging could contribute to this increased risk. To investigate, we assessed leukocyte telomere length (LTL), an emerging marker of biological age, in men and women with and without PTSD. We also examined childhood trauma, a risk factor for both PTSD and short LTL, as a potential contributor to short LTL in PTSD.

Author(s): 
O'Donovan, Aoife
Epel, Elissa
Lin, Jue
Wolkowitz, Owen
Cohen, Beth
Maguen, Shira
Metzler, Thomas
Lenoci, Maryann
Blackburn, Elizabeth
Neylan, Thomas C.
Publication Title: 
The Psychiatric Clinics of North America

The possibility has to be considered that the infant, in danger of overwhelming himself with his own excitement, forms object-representations in ways dictated by expediency. It is necessary for survival to establish in one's mind an all-powerful and loving object-representation that contains in it major parts of the self-representation. In fact, all the vital and affective functions are attributed to the parenting object and are used only under a "franchise-like" illusion.

Author(s): 
Krystal, H.
Publication Title: 
The Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis

The intrapsychic processes underlying the phenomenology of PTSD symptoms appear to derive their fate from the states of consciousness at the time of traumatic experiences. The operative mechanisms of consciousness-condensation, avoidance of censorship, representability, and secondary revision-are the elements of trauma work as they are of dream work. These mechanisms establish an ever-present dynamic mental state of space consciousness, which is defined as an essential component of mental activities.

Author(s): 
Emery, P. E.
Publication Title: 
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

Epidemiological data have linked an adverse fetal environment with increased risks of cardiovascular, metabolic, neuroendocrine, and psychiatric disorders in adulthood. Prenatal stress and/or glucocorticoid excess might underlie this link.

Author(s): 
Seckl, Jonathan R.
Meaney, Michael J.
Publication Title: 
Progress in Brain Research

Parental posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) appears to be a relevant risk factor for the development of PTSD, as evidenced by a greater prevalence of PTSD, but not trauma exposure, in adult offspring of Holocaust survivors with PTSD, compared to children of Holocaust-exposed parents without PTSD. This paper summarizes recent neuroendocrine studies in offspring of parents with PTSD.

Author(s): 
Yehuda, Rachel
Bierer, Linda M.
Publication Title: 
Journal of Psychiatric Research

BACKGROUND: A significant association between parental PTSD and the occurrence of PTSD in offspring has been noted, consistent with the idea that risk for the development of PTSD is transmitted from parent to child. Two recent reports linking maternal PTSD and low offspring cortisol prompted us to examine the relative contributions of maternal vs. paternal PTSD in the prediction of PTSD and other psychiatric diagnoses in offspring.

Author(s): 
Yehuda, Rachel
Bell, Amanda
Bierer, Linda M.
Schmeidler, James

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