Vulnerability to PTSD: Psychosocial and demographic risk and resilience factors

Abstract

The risk of developing PTSD after a traumatic experience depends on several vulnerability factors that may be classified into three distinct categories—pre-traumatic, peri-traumatic, and posttraumatic. Accordingly, while attempting to draw the profile of the high-risk patient for PTSD, the following factors should be included, among others: The history of previous trauma, the history of previous psychiatric disorder, female gender, ethnic minority, high severity of initial posttraumatic symptoms (ASR), associated body injury, “high-risk” traumatic event (man-made trauma), and peri-traumatic dissociation. In contrast, various resilience factors may be protective and act to prevent the development of PTSD. Although resilience factors were generally not discussed in this chapter, future research should be designed to uncover resilience factors, in order to differentiate between high-risk and low-risk patients in order to identifying the patients at risk and to attempt to develop the strategies to prevent the development of PTSD.