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Trauma

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences
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Synonyms

Adversity; Adversity, stress; Child maltreatment; PTSD; Violence

Definition

Trauma experience involves the exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence at any point in the life course. Trauma impact includes clinical outcomes, specifically posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but also emotional disorder (depression, anxiety) and behaviors and symptoms including deliberate self-harm and dissociative states. Impacts in childhood include lifelong sensitivity or vulnerability to later trauma experience and disorder through psychological, biological, and social pathways.

Introduction

Incidence and Risk

Clinical conditions directly related to trauma have relatively low prevalence in Western societies with PTSD lifetime prevalence estimated at 5–10% in US studies (Kessler 2000) and 1–3% in Europe (Darves-Bornoz et al. 2008). There is a 1:2 male-to-female ratio, in spite of men reporting greater trauma exposure. Higher rates are observed in political...

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References

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Correspondence to Antonia Bifulco .

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Bifulco, A. (2017). Trauma. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_877-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_877-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

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