Relationship of early life trauma, war related trauma, personality traits and PTSD symptom severity : A retrospective study on female civilian victims of war

Consequences of war-related traumatisation have mostly been investigated in military and predominant male populations while research on female civilian victims of war has been neglected. Moreover, research of post-war PTSD in women has rarely included early life trauma in their prediction models so the contribution of trauma in childhood and early youth are still unexplored. Objective was to examine the relationship of early life trauma, war-related trauma, personality traits and symptoms of posttraumatic stress among female civilian victims of the recent war in Croatia. The cross-sectional study included 394 participants, 293 war traumatised adult women civilians and 101 women without war trauma. Participantswere recruited using the snowball sampling method. The applied instruments included the Clinician Administrated PTSD scale (CAPS), the NEO-Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO-PI-R), the War Stressors Assessment Questionnaire (WSAQ) and the Early Trauma Inventory Self Report-Short Form (ETISR-SF). A hierarchical multiple regression analysis was performed to assess the prediction model of PTSD symptom severity measured by CAPS score for current PTSD. The prevalence of current PTSD (CAPS cut-off score = 65) in this cohort was 20.7%. The regression model that included age, early life trauma, war trauma, neuroticism and extraversion as statistically significant predictors explained 45.8% of variance in PTSD symptoms. Older age, exposure to early life trauma, exposure to war-related traumatic events, high neuroticism and low extraversion are independent factors associated with higher level of PTSD symptoms among women civilian victims of war