While emotion dysregulation is associated with many psychological disorders, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), it remains uncertain whether pre-existing emotion dysregulation increases individual risk for prospectively developing PTSD in the aftermath of trauma exposure. Thus, the objective of the current study was to determine whether emotion dysregulation could prospectively predict the development of chronic PTSD symptoms following a traumatic event above and beyond other known associated factors, including depressive symptoms, baseline PTSD symptoms, total traumas experienced, and exposure to interpersonal trauma. Participants (N = 135) were recruited from the emergency department (ED) at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta and follow-up assessments were conducted at 1-, 3-, 6-, and 12-months following trauma exposure. Latent Growth Mixture Modeling was used to identify PTSD symptom trajectories based on symptoms assessed at 1, 3, 6, and 12 months; three trajectories emerged: "chronic", "recovery", and "resilient". For the present study, probability of chronic PTSD symptoms was used as the outcome variable of interest. Linear regression modeling showed that emotion dysregulation was significantly associated with probability of developing chronic PTSD symptoms (p = 0.001) and accounted for an additional 7% of unique predictive variance when controlling for trauma exposure, baseline PTSD, and depressive symptoms. Our findings suggest that emotion dysregulation can be used as both a predictor of chronic PTSD and as a treatment target. Thus, identifying individuals with high levels of emotion dysregulation at the time of trauma and implementing treatments designed to improve emotion regulation could aid in decreasing the development of chronic PTSD among these at-risk individuals.

中文翻译：

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情绪失调与慢性 PTSD 发展的预期风险增加相关。

虽然情绪失调与许多心理疾病有关，包括创伤后应激障碍 (PTSD)，但目前尚不确定先前存在的情绪失调是否会增加个体在遭受创伤后发生 PTSD 的风险。因此，本研究的目的是确定情绪失调是否可以前瞻性地预测创伤事件后慢性 PTSD 症状的发展，而这些症状超出了其他已知的相关因素，包括抑郁症状、基线 PTSD 症状、经历的总创伤和暴露于人际创伤。参与者 (N = 135) 是从亚特兰大格雷迪纪念医院急诊科 (ED) 招募的，并在创伤暴露后 1、3、6 和 12 个月进行后续评估。潜在生长混合模型用于根据 1、3、6 和 12 个月评估的症状来识别 PTSD 症状轨迹；出现了三种轨迹：“慢性”、“恢复”和“有弹性”。在本研究中，慢性 PTSD 症状的概率被用作感兴趣的结果变量。线性回归模型显示，情绪失调与出现慢性 PTSD 症状的可能性显着相关 (p = 0.001)，并且在控制创伤暴露、基线 PTSD 和抑郁症状时，可额外解释 7% 的独特预测方差。我们的研究结果表明，情绪失调既可以作为慢性创伤后应激障碍的预测指标，也可以作为治疗目标。因此，识别创伤时情绪失调程度较高的个体并实施旨在改善情绪调节的治疗可能有助于减少这些高危个体中慢性创伤后应激障碍的发展。