Emotional Experiencing in Women with PTSD

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Abstract

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is characterized by extreme emotional reactivity coupled with avoidance of trauma-related situations or cues, and/or an overall numbing of emotional experiencing. However, little is known about the exact nature of disrupted emotional experiencing in PTSD, or the role of disrupted emotional experiencing in the maintenance of the disorder. Even less is known about disrupted emotional experiencing in women with PTSD, specifically, which is significant given that women are more likely to be diagnosed with PTSD than men. Research on emotions and emotional processes in non-trauma populations suggests that disrupted emotional experiencing may in part relate to incongruities in domains of emotional experiencing. Indeed, a preliminary study by our research group found that women with PTSD demonstrated incongruities between facial expressivity and self-report of emotional experiencing. The current study replicates and expands upon this preliminary study by including measures of physiological responding and improving methodological limitations of the earlier study. Based on Litz's theory of emotional numbing (1992) which posits that emotional numbing is more likely to occur subsequent to stimuli which primes individuals to their traumatic memories, emotional experiencing will be evaluated both during a priming procedure as well as during the presentation of subsequent emotional stimuli. The study will focus on women specifically because of the paucity of information on emotional disruptions in women, and in order to increase sample homogeneity. The specific aims of this investigation are the following: 1) assess the physiological responding of women with sexual assault-related PTSD to trauma-related cues; 2) assess the degree of concordance between domains of emotional experiencing in women with sexual assault-related PTSD; 3) conduct an exploratory examination of conscious efforts to suppress emotions in women with PTSD. The current study is viewed as a pilot project of a larger research program, which aims to further the understanding of the pathogenesis of PTSD, toward improving preventative efforts and existing treatments for this disorder. [unreadable] [unreadable]