The Peritraumatic Behavior Questionnaire: development and initial validation of a new measure for combat-related peritraumatic reactions

BMC Psychiatry

Research Article

Brett T Litz¹  William P Nash²  Abigail Goldsmith³  Kate A Yurgil⁴  Heather Johnson⁴  Agorastos Agorastos⁵  Sarah Nunnink⁶  James B Lohr⁶  Dewleen G Baker⁷ 

[1] Department of Psychiatry and Department of Psychology, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA;National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, VA Boston Healthcare System, Boston, MA, USA;Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA;Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA;VA San Diego Healthcare System, San Diego, CA, USA;VA San Diego Healthcare System, San Diego, CA, USA;Veterans Affairs Center of Excellence for Stress and Mental Health, VA San Diego, CA, USA;Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany;Veterans Affairs Center of Excellence for Stress and Mental Health, VA San Diego, CA, USA;Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA;VA San Diego Healthcare System, San Diego, CA, USA;Veterans Affairs Center of Excellence for Stress and Mental Health, VA San Diego, CA, USA;Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA;VA San Diego Healthcare System, San Diego, CA, USA;Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive (0603V), 92093-0603V, La Jolla, CA, USA;

关键词: Peritraumatic behavior questionnaire;    Peritraumatic dissociation;    Peritraumatic reaction;    Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD);    Stress;    Psychometric properties;    Validity;    Reliability;    Screening;    Assessment;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-244X-13-9

 received in 2012-10-08, accepted in 2013-01-02,  发布年份 2013

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundPosttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is one of the most commonly observed stress-related conditions following combat exposure and its effective prevention is a high health-care priority. Reports of peritraumatic reactions have been shown to be highly associated with PTSD among combat exposed service members. However, existing instruments measuring peritraumatic symptoms were not specifically developed to assess combat-related peritraumatic stress and each demonstrates a different peritraumatic focus. We therefore developed the Peritraumatic Behavior Questionnaire (PBQ), a new military-specific rating scale focused upon the wide range of symptoms suggestive of combat-related peritraumatic distress in actively deployed Service Members. This study describes the development of the PBQ and reports on the psychometric properties of its self-rated version (PBQ-SR).Methods688 Marine infantry service members were retrospectively assessed by the PBQ-SR within the scope of the Marine Resiliency Study after their deployment to war zone. Participants have been additionally assessed by a variety of questionnaires, as well as clinical interviews both pre and post-deployment.ResultsThe PBQ-SR demonstrated satisfactory internal consistency, convergent and discriminant validity, as well as high correlation with trait dissociation prior to deployment. Component analysis suggested a latent bi-dimensional structure separating a peritraumatic emotional distress and physical awareness factor. The PBQ-SR total score showed high correlation to general anxiety, depression, poorer general health and posttraumatic symptoms after deployment and remained a significant predictor of PTSD severity, after controlling for those measures. The suggested screening cut-off score of 12 points demonstrated satisfactory predictive power.ConclusionsThis study confirms the ability of the PBQ-SR to unify the underlying peritraumatic symptom dimensions and reliably assess combat-related peritraumatic reaction as a general construct. The PBQ-SR demonstrated promise as a potential standard screening measure in military clinical practice, while It’s predictive power should be established in prospective studies.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Agorastos et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.