An examination of the construct validity of posttraumatic stress disorder with veterans using a revised criterion set
Section snippets
Study design
A cross-sectional study was conducted on a random sample of veterans at four VA Medical Centers (Charleston and Columbia, SC; Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, AL). Study participants were randomly selected from a master list of patients during the fiscal year 1999 at one of the four VA primary care sites. Consenting participants were provided with a semi-structured clinic assessment at the time of informed consent, and within two months, were administered a structured telephone interview by masters
Demographic
Sample demographics and trauma exposure variables are presented in Table 1.
Prevalence
Ninety (90) patients (12.0%) met criteria for PTSD using both the DSM-IV PTSD criteria and Spitzer et al.’s (2007) proposed symptom criteria (see Table 1). No significant difference was found between the two PTSD symptom structure models in terms of diagnostic status. In fact, only 4 participants (.5%) who met PTSD criteria according to DSM-IV did not receive a PTSD diagnosis when using Spitzer and colleagues’ revised
Discussion
In light of ongoing discussion regarding the construct validity of PTSD, the current manuscript examined Spitzer et al.’s (2007) proposed refinement to PTSD’s criterion set, relative to the traditional DSM-IV PTSD criterion set, in a sample of veterans. We were specifically interested in examining prevalence of PTSD, PTSD diagnostic caseness, psychiatric comorbidity, functional status, and structural validity across both diagnostic sets. After removing items theorized to overlap with mood and
Acknowledgement
This work was partially supported by grants CD207015 and VCR-99-010-2 from the Veterans Affairs Health Services Research and Development (HSR&D) program and grant MH074468 from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).
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- 1
Houston Center for Quality of Care and Utilization Studies, Michael E. DeBakey VAMC, 2002 Holcombe Drive (152), Houston, TX 77030, USA.
- 2
University of Hawai’i at Hilo, Department of Psychology, 200 West Kawili Street, Hilo, Hawai’i 96720, USA.