When the Levee Breaks: An SEM Approach to Understanding the Narrative and the Anxiety-Buffer Disruption on PTSD Symptoms

• Main Author: Schuler, Eric Robert
• Other Authors: Boals, Adriel, 1973-
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: University of North Texas 2017
• Subjects: Trauma; Worldview; Event Centrality; Anxiety-buffer; Structural equation modeling; Post-traumatic stress disorder.; Affect (Psychology); Fear of death.
• Online Access: https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc984252/

The purpose of the present study was to assess if combining the two frameworks would account for more variance in PTSS than could be accounted for using the frameworks separately. An online community sample from Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk (N = 437), who reported experiencing a prior traumatic event, completed measures that reflected the constructs of narrative centrality, negative affectivity, and death concerns, along with a measure of PTSS. PTSS was regressed on the latent variables of death concerns, narrative centrality, and negative affectivity, along with the latent variable interactions between narrative centrality*death concerns and narrative centrality*negative affectivity. Death concerns was not be predictive of PTSS, whereas narrative centrality and negative affectivity were found to uniquely and interactively account for 77% of the variance in PTSS. Death concerns was found to be a separate construct from negative affectivity. The implications of these findings for the two frameworks are discussed along with future directions. By considering aspects of narrative centrality and negative affectivity, substantial portions of PTSS can be accounted for.