Comprehensive psychiatry
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Comprehensive psychiatry · Jan 2002
Comparative StudyThe impact of torture on post-traumatic stress symptoms in war-affected Tamil refugees and immigrants.
The present study examines the effect of torture in generating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms by comparing its impact with that of other traumas suffered by a war-affected sample of Tamils living in Australia. Traumatic predictors of PTSD were examined among a subsample of 107 Tamils (refugees, asylum seekers, and voluntary immigrants) who had endorsed at least one trauma category on the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire. ⋯ The torture factor identified by the PCA was found to be the main predictor of PTSD in a multiple regression analysis. Although limited by sampling constraints and retrospective measurement, the present study provides support for the identification of torture as a particularly traumatic event, even when the impact of other war-related trauma is taken into account.