The relation between change in reports of traumatic events and symptoms of psychiatric distress

This study examines change in the reporting of trauma events in relation to the reporting of severity of symptoms of psychiatric distress among refugees from Southeast Asia. Patients (N = 30) from a specialized clinic were interviewed on two occasions using a questionnaire which includes inquiry about traumatic events and about psychiatric symptoms. The changes in responses to the questionnaire, administered twice, 1 week apart, were assessed. In accord with other studies, results indicated that the number of trauma events reported correlates positively with severity of symptoms (r = 0.533, p = 0.002). Severity of symptoms of psychiatric distress increased slightly from time 1 to time 2 for 23 of the 30 symptoms. The reporting of trauma events varied between time 1 and time 2; the correlation coefficient ranged from 0.23 to 0.90, with a median 0.62 for the 17 trauma events. The important new finding is that of an inverse relation between total symptom score and the percent change in the reporting of trauma events on two occasions (r = -0.478, p = 0.009). Findings suggest that clinicians and researchers should give attention to variability in recall of traumatic events and reexamine the emphasis placed on the memory of traumatic events in the treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.