BACKGROUND Trained local screeners assessed the mental-health status of male and female students in Northern Ugandan schools. The study aimed to disclose potential differences in mental health-related impairment in two groups, former child soldiers (n = 354) and other war-affected youth (n = 489), as well as to separate factors predicting mental suffering in learners. METHODS Participants wer...

Eight-hundred thirty-three members of an ethnically diverse longitudinal cohort study in Hawaii were surveyed about their personal exposure to several types of traumatic events, socioeconomic resources, and mental health symptoms. Results replicated findings from prior research that while men and women are exposed to similar rates of trauma overall, women report more exposure to traumas high in...

Children in the child welfare system frequently experience trauma within the caregiving relationship. These traumatic experiences may be compounded by system trauma and place these children at high risk of emotional disorders and placement in out-of-home (OOH) mental health treatment programs. This article reviews the literature on trauma and children in the child welfare system and discusses a...

This study utilized the Expanded Behavioral Model of Health Service Use Among Vulnerable Populations to investigate disparities in mental health care use among a community sample of urban, impoverished, trauma-exposed adults. Self-report questionnaires were completed by 135 adults with a lifetime history of traumatic stress exposure. Results suggested approximately 20% of the sample were receiv...

The objective of this study was to investigate the cumulative effect of interpersonal and noninterpersonal traumatic life events (IPEs and nIPEs, respectively) on the mental health of adolescents and to determine if the adverse impacts of trauma were moderated by adverse family circumstances (AFC). Adolescents (mean age 16.7 years) from the normative population (n = 462) completed the questionn...

1 The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) concept of trauma provides a comprehensive definition: Individual trauma results from an event, series of events or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, ...

Many mental health problems among substance abusing populations are directly linked to high rates of abuse and trauma. There is increasing evidence of associations between childhood physical and sexual abuse to adult substance use and HIV-risk behavior. The relationship of abuse, mental health problems, substance abuse, and high-risk sexual behavior has rarely been studied in the female Native ...

The aim of the study was to explore secondary traumatic stress experienced by nurses working in mental health services in Kigali, Rwanda. A quantitative study was conducted at Ndera Psychiatric Hospital, Kigali, Rwanda, using a convenience sample of 50 nurses who provided mental health care to trauma survivors and mentally ill patients. A questionnaire was compiled consisting of the Trauma Atta...

P sleep disturbance exemplifies the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV-TR) nosological paradigm, “Sleep Disorder Related to Another Mental Disorder.” According to the DSM-IV-TR criteria (see Figure 1), this disorder “involves a prominent complaint of sleep disturbance that results from a diagnosable mental disorder but that is sufficiently severe to warrant independent cl...

The present study evaluated the impact of combat and interpersonal trauma exposure in a sample of 115 U.S. women veterans from Gulf War I and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars on 3 postdeployment trauma-related mental health outcomes: posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms (PSS), depressive symptom severity (DSS), and alcohol misuse. Patients presenting for healthcare services at a Veterans Affairs...