Retrospectively assessed trajectories of PTSD symptoms and their subsequent comorbidities

Dynamic trajectories of psychopathology, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) provide a key to understanding human adjustment processes after trauma exposure. Recent studies have suggested more heterogeneous mental health outcomes than the initially identified four trajectories. To explore this heterogeneity, we investigated after-trauma patterns psychopathology based on retrospective lifetime data. This was first carried out PTSD symptoms (PTSS, including no symptoms, few partial and full PTSD), secondly together with their post-trauma comorbidities. Data disorders were collected for large randomly selected community sample, resulting in N = 960 trauma-exposed subsample. Pattern recognition by latent class analysis (LCA) implemented LCA exploited identify potential trajectory PTSS next adjustments when additional comorbid disorders, anxiety, mood substance use assessed. Four found, namely resilient, chronic, recovered, delayed onset, consistent findings from longitudinal studies. When comorbidities evaluated, other pattern onset which retained low comorbidity profile, three split respectively paired up either low, moderate or high profile. Mental exposure considerably complex previously established Here, uncovered comprised profiles.