By the Numbers: 18 April 2022

By the Numbers: 18 April 2022

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20%

The percentage "of individuals who experience a traumatic injury" who "will subsequently develop posttraumatic stress disorder," according to a recent article in the Journal of Traumatic Stress -- The role of pain and socioenvironmental factors on posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms in traumatically injured adults: A 1-year prospective study.

Physical pain following traumatic injury has received increasing attention as both a distinct, functionally debilitating disorder and a comorbid symptom related to PTSD. Studies have demonstrated that both clinician-assessed injury severity and patient pain ratings can be important predictors of nonremitting PTSD; however, few have examined pain and PTSD alongside socioenvironmental factors.
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Results demonstrated associations between patient-reported pain ratings, but not clinician-assessed injury severity scores, and PTSD symptoms, R2(fvm) = .65. There was a significant interaction between neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage and pain such that higher disadvantage decreased the strength of the pain–PTSD association but only among White participants, R2(fvm) = .69.