Main traumatic events in Europe: PTSD in the European study of the epidemiology of mental disorders survey†
This project was funded by the European Commission (Contract QLG5-1999-01042), SANCO 20040123, FIS (00/0028-02), SAF 2000-1800-CE, the Piedmont region (Italy), the Servei Catalá de la Salut (CatSalut) and other local agencies, and by an unrestricted educational grant from GlaxoSmithKline.
The ESEMeD Survey is carried out in conjunction with the WHO World Mental Health Survey Initiative (http://www.hcp.med.harvard.edu/wmh/). We thank the WMH coordinating staff both for their assistance with instrumentation and for their consultation on field procedures.
Abstract
A potentially traumatic event (PTE) contributes to trauma through its frequency, conditional probability of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and experience of other PTEs. A cross-sectional survey was conducted, enrolling 21,425 adults nationally representative of six European countries. Using the WHO-Composite International Diagnostic Interview, 8,797 were interviewed on 28 PTEs and PTSD. Prevalence of 12-month PTSD was 1.1%. When PTSD was present, the mean number of PTEs experienced was 3.2. In a multivariate analysis on PTEs and gender, six PTEs were found to be more traumatic, and to explain a large percentage of PTSD, as estimated by their attributable risk of PTSD: rape, undisclosed private event, having a child with serious illness, beaten by partner, stalked, beaten by caregiver.
