Criminal victimization, posttraumatic stress disorder, and comorbid psychopathology among a community sample of women

This paper provides information on the relation between victimization statu s, crime factors, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and several other p sychological disorders among a community sample of women. Results indicated that victims of crime were more likely than nonvictims to suffer from PTSD , major depressive episode, agoraphobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder soci al phobia, and simple phobia. Furthermore, life threat was associated with increased risk of major depression, agoraphobia, obsessive-compulsive disor der and social phobia. Completed rape was strongly related to almost every disorder assessed, while robbery and burglary were not related to any disor der When demographics, victimization status, and crime factors were entered hierarchically into multivariate logistic regressions with PTSD in the fin al step, associations between victimization status, other crime characteris tics (e.g., life threat, injury), and non-PTSD Axis I disorders were greatl y reduced. This suggests that PTSD may be an important mediating factor in the victimization-psychopathology relation for many disorders.