Kiban Turner

This article reviews the psychometric properties of the Stressful Life Events Screening Questionnaire (SLESQ), a recently developed trauma history screening measure, and discusses the complexities involved in assessing trauma exposure. There are relatively few general measures of exposure to a variety of types of traumatic events, and most of those that exist have not been subjected to rigorous psychometric evaluation. The SLESQ showed good test-retest reliability, with a median kappa of .73, adequate convergent validity (with a lengthier interview) with a median kappa of .64, and good discrimination between Criterion A and non-Criterion A events. The discussion addresses some of the challenges of assessing traumatic event exposure along the dimensions of defining traumatic events, assessment methodologies, reporting consistency, and incident validation.

Recent studies have shown high rates of premilitary trauma exposure among U.S. military enlistees. Given the association of trauma with later stressor vulnerability, it is important to examine the role of premilitary stress and trauma in adaptation to the stress of recruit training. U.S. Marine Corps recruits (N = 1,530) were surveyed for premilitary histories of interpersonal trauma to examine the relationship between premilitary trauma and attrition from recruit training. The majority of the recruits (47.5% of men and 68.1% of women) reported experiencing at least one interpersonal trauma before entering the Marine Corps. Individuals with a history of interpersonal trauma were at significantly greater risk for attrition; they were 1.5 times more likely to drop out of recruit training than were individuals without a trauma history. These findings suggest that developing interventions to bolster recruits' coping skills may improve adaptation to the recruit training environment and thus decrease attrition.

This paper describes a pilot study of a 1-year multi-modal treatment for incest survivors, incorporating individual psychotherapy, group psychotherapy, and pharmacotherapy. The treatment was designed to provide a therapeutic context in which the affective intensity and meaning originally attached to the traumatic experience could be tolerated, and in which a thoughtful, reflective construction of the impact of the trauma could be developed. PTSD symptoms decreased in all participants, with all but one no longer meeting the diagnosis at post-treatment and follow-up. Using a narrative methodology, maladaptive schemas and overwhelming affects, ‘trauma themes’, were also assessed to understand the survivors' views about themselves, others and the world around them. Participants demonstrated a steady pattern of improvement in the resolution of trauma themes. A discussion of the complex posttraumatic response to incest is included, as is a brief description of the treatment.