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Psychophysiologic Assessment of PTSD in Adult Females Sexually Abused during Childhood a
Author(s) -
ORR SCOTT P.,
LASKO NATASHA B.,
METZGER LINDA J.,
BERRY NANCY J.,
AHERN CARYL E.,
PITMAN ROGER K.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
annals of the new york academy of sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.712
H-Index - 248
eISSN - 1749-6632
pISSN - 0077-8923
DOI - 10.1111/j.1749-6632.1997.tb48313.x
Subject(s) - veterans affairs , medical school , military service , maple , medicine , gerontology , library science , political science , medical education , law , botany , computer science , biology
Seventy-one women able to recount two or more penetrative episodes of sexual abuse prior to age 13 were classified via the Structured Clinical Interview for DSMIII-R' into Current (n = 29), Lifetime (n = 24), or Never (n = 18) PTSD groups. Information on whether abuse memories were recovered or continuous was also obtained. Using a script-driven imagery technique:> participants were asked to imagine personal and hypothetical experiences as vividly as possible while heart rate (HR), skin conductance (SC), and lateral frontalis (LF) and convgator (C) electromyograms (EMGs) were recorded. Response scores were calculated for each physiologic dependent variable by subtracting the preceding baseline value from the mean level during imagery. Scripts were rated by experts for event severity on 012 scales. A discriminant function derived from the HR, SC, and LF-EMG responses during personal traumatic imagery of previously studied individuals (n = 96) with and without PTSD"' was used to classify physiologic responses of participants.