Sociocultural etiologies Vulnerability + Explanatory - Luby/kirmeyers

PTSD defined

• mental disorder triggered by experiencing or witnessing a traumatic event

• symptoms include - affective (emotion), behavioural (repetitive), cognitive (disruptions to memory/learning), somatic (physical symptoms)

• Classification is called DSM 5 criteria (survey) which discusses symptoms of PTSD

sociocultural etiology: vulnerability models

• when there are more risk factors in the environment than protective factors, then someone is more likely to develop a disorder

risk factors for PTSD in vulnerability models

• female gender, low socioeconomic status, or previous trauma exposure are consistently found with higher PTSD symptom levels

• lack of social support post-trauma is most significant risk factor

luby aim

• to investigate whether poverty experienced in early childhood impacts brain development and to explore mediators of this effect

luby method

• 145 right handed children recruited from large sample of 10 year longitudinal preschool depression study

• cognitively and socially assessed yearly for 3 to 6 years

• support or hostility of primary caregiver was also noted

• presence of stressful life experiences was also noted

• MRI scans measured brain volumes of white and grey matter and volumes of hippocampus + amygdala

results of luby

• poverty was associated with less white and grey matter in brain and with smaller hippocampus and amygdala volumes

• if caregiver was supportive or hostile mediated effects of poverty on both hippocampi

• stressful life events affected volume of left hippocampus only

conclusion of luby

• in conclusion, poverty experienced in early childhood impacted brain development because the amygdala and hippocampus of children in poverty had smaller volumes

link back for luby

• if the caregiver was supportive then it mediated the poverty effects on the brain which could limit the chance of PTSD development

• a lower socioeconomic status could result in poverty

eval of luby

• while the study sample was large, it was taken from depression study database so children likely already had depression which could have affected brain volume and affected the generalizability of the findings

• could be some bidirectional ambiguity as unsure if the poverty causes the brain volume changes or if caregiver response causes the brain volume changes which reduces internal validity

• study was 6 year longitudinal which increases the credibility of the results and allows the researchers to examine long term effects of poverty

eval of vulnerability models etiology

• holistic research identifies both protective and risk factors, so prioritises prevention over treatment

• high ecological validity

• studies are usually longitudinal

• research is usually correlational

• theories are descriptive rather than explanatory so don’t explain origin of disorder

socioeconomic etiology - kirmeyers explanatory model

• cultures create socially acceptable sets of symptoms for mental distress

• explanatory models can change due to cultures continually evolving

• a victim processes a traumatic event as a function of what it means - meaning is drawn from their society and culture and shapes how they seek help and their recovery

fernando aim

• to investigate how sri lankans deal with trauma using local knowledge (emic approach)

fernando method

• asked 20 local pp to think about someone they knew who had experienced the tsunami but was now not functioning well comparatively

• collected roughly 20 symptoms and beh that were mentioned by 15 or more pp

fernando results

• found that sri lankan diagnosis of trauma related dysfunction differed from western diagnosis

• sri lankans more likely to experience physical symptoms

• sri lankans reported more social issues like feelings of isolation and shame for not being able to fulfill their role in the community

conclusion of fernando

in conclusion, the researcher found that sri lankan diagnosis of trauma-related dysfunction differed from western diagnosis in two ways, sri lankans felt more physical symptoms and felt more feelings of isolation and shame compared to western diagnosis

fernando eval

• emic approach comes up with solutions that can be applied directly to the community being studied

• results confirmed by local people which validates that the interpretations of the research reflect the realities of the culture

• emic approach can take a long time and assumes the local population understands beh of their own culture