Post-traumatic Stress and Trauma-Related Subjective Distress: Comparisons Among Hispanics, African-Americans, and Whites with Severe Mental Illness

• Published in: Community mental health journal Vol. 53; no. 7; pp. 778 - 781
• Main Authors: O’Hare, Thomas, Shen, Ce, Sherrer, Margaret V.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01-10-2017; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: African Americans; Community and Environmental Psychology; Community mental health services; Health problems; Hispanic Americans; Hispanic people; Hypotheses; Hypothesis testing; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Mental disorders; Original Paper; Post traumatic stress disorder; Psychiatric symptoms; Psychiatry; Psychological distress; Psychological trauma; Sexual abuse; Symptoms; Trauma; White people; Severe mental illness; Trauma; Post-traumatic stress; Race
• ISSN: 0010-3853; 1573-2789
• DOI: 10.1007/s10597-017-0097-8

We tested the hypothesis with a sample of community mental health clients (N = 132) that Hispanic clients would report significantly greater post-traumatic stress symptoms than African-American or white clients when controlling for gender, psychiatric symptoms of SMI, and subjective distress from six of the most commonly reported trauma in the SMI literature. Results supported our main hypothesis: being self-identified as Hispanic was significantly associated with greater post-traumatic stress symptoms. Subjective distress from having been sexually abused along with being “Hispanic” were the only two significant variables left in the equation. Limitations of this study include its modest sample size.