Acute Traumatic Stress in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Parents: Relation to Existential Emotion-Based Personality Predispositions

This study explored the relation between personality predisposition to existential emotions-shame (Test of Self-Conscious Affect), guilt (Guilt Inventory), and fear of death (Collett-Lester Fear of Death Scale)-and acute traumatic stress symptom severity (Stanford Acute Stress Reaction Questionnaire) in a cohort of parents of neonatal intensive care unit infants (mothers, N = 110; fathers, N = 94). There was a significant correlation between fear of death and acute stress symptom severity in both mothers and fathers, and fear of death explained a significant unique proportion of the variance in acute stress symptom severity in both sexes. Shame and chronic guilt made significant contributions to the variance in acute stress symptom severity in mothers, though the relationship was mediated by fear of death.