The role of emotion in PTSD: two preliminary studies

Two studies are presented that highlight the role of emotion in PTSD in which we examine what emotions in addition to anxiety may be present.

The first aim was to assess the overall emotion profile across the five basic emotions of anxiety, sadness, anger, disgust, and happiness in clients attending a stress clinic. A small pilot study was also carried out to see how the emotion profiles impacted on outcome for CBT.

In Study 1, 75 consecutive attenders at a trauma service who were diagnosed with PTSD were assessed with a number of measures that included the Basic Emotions Scale.

The results showed that less than 50% of PTSD cases presented with anxiety as the primary emotion, with the remainder showing primary emotions of sadness, anger, or disgust rather than anxiety. A second pilot study involved the follow-up across exposure-based CBT of 20 of the participants from Study 1.

The results suggest that anxiety-based PTSD is more likely to benefit from exposure than is non-anxiety based PTSD. Implications both for the classification and the treatment of PTSD are considered.