Posttraumatic Stress Disorder After Spinal Cord Injury

Objective: The objective of the study was to identify the relationships of demographics, injury-related characteristics, employment, depressive symptoms, and health events with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among participants with spinal cord injury. Research Method: A total of 1,063 participants were recruited from 3 sites in different regions (Southeastern, Mountain, and Western) of the United States. Hispanics and non-Hispanic Blacks were oversampled. Three hundred sixty-nine were non-Hispanic White, followed by 361 non-Hispanic Black, 277 Hispanic, and 56 from other racial-ethnic groups. PTSD was measured by the Purdue PTSD Scale-Revised. All variables were measured by self-report. Multivariate logistic regression models were developed to assess the association between PTSD and multiple variables. Results: The overall prevalence of PTSD across all participants was 24.9%, and the mean PTSD score of all participants was 34.7 (SD = 14.6). PTSD was associated with depression, frequency of medication use for depression or stress, number of times receiving medical care because of injury in the past year, and race-ethnicity (lower among non-Hispanic Whites). Conclusions: PTSD was relatively prevalent in this study. PTSD was highly comorbid with depressive disorders and associated with post-spinal cord injuries within the previous year.