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Acute stress disorder after burn injury: a predictor of posttraumatic stress disorder?
JoAnn Difede1, J T Ptacek, Jennifer Roberts
1Department of Psychiatry and William Randolph Hearst Burn Center, The New York Presbyterian Hospital, New York, NY 10021, USA. jdifede@med.cornell.edu
Objectives:
The principal goals of this study were to determine whether ASD predicted chronic PTSD and whether dissociation is more characteristic of the acute-trauma period than PTSD symptoms.
Methods:
Eighty-three hospitalized adult burn patients were assessed with structured interviews and self-report measures within 2 weeks of injury and again at least 6 months postburn.
Results:
Nineteen percent had ASD. Dissociative symptoms were not more common or more severe than PTSD symptoms. Thirty-six percent had chronic PTSD. While ASD predicted chronic PTSD, meeting the symptom criteria for PTSD within 2 weeks postburn also predicted chronic PTSD.
Conclusions:
Our data support the inclusion of an ASD diagnosis in the DSM, which would allow the diagnosis of symptoms in the first month posttrauma as a psychiatric disorder but questions whether dissociation is more characteristic of the acute trauma period than the PTSD symptom clusters.