Impact of Trauma Severity and Social Support on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Abstract

One important mental illness that occurs following exposure to traumatic events like accidents, violence, calamities or warfare is Post-Traumatic Stress Disease (PTSD). This research paper investigates how the severity of a trauma and social support influence the PTSD symptoms. Trauma severity is characterized by the intensity and duration of trauma exposure whereas the social support is characterized by emotional, informational and practical help offered by relatives, friends, and society. The research design is quantitative research design and is founded on secondary data and statistical techniques such as correlation, t-test, ANOVA and regression are employed to investigate associations between variables. The findings show that the severity of the trauma is significantly correlated with the PTSD symptoms (r = 0.71) and the social support has a significant negative correlation with PTSD (r = -0.68). Low social support individuals will have a much higher score on PTSD than the people who have high social support (p < 0.001). Also, the level of trauma is a significant elevator of PTSD levels among groups ( F = 96.45, p under 0.001), and the combination of both variables accounts to 61 percent of the variability in PTSD symptoms (R2 = 0.61). The research concludes that the more severe trauma is, the higher the risk of PTSD, and the more social support is present, the lower the influence of trauma on PTSD.