We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Connecting the dots: A network approach to post‐traumatic stress symptoms in Chinese healthcare workers during the peak of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 outbreak.
- Authors
Hoorelbeke, Kristof; Sun, Xiaoxiao; Koster, Ernst H. W.; Dai, Qin
- Abstract
Healthcare workers are at elevated risk to develop symptoms of post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in response to an outbreak of a highly infectious disease. The current study set‐out to model the complex interrelations between PTSD symptoms during the peak of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 outbreak in 291 Chinese healthcare workers and 291 matched control cases that were selected from the general population. For this purpose, we estimated regularized partial correlation networks. Within the network of healthcare workers, we observed a central role for avoidance of reminders of the traumatic event, physiological cue reactivity, anger/irritability, re‐experiencing, and startle. We identified three clusters of closely interconnected PTSD symptoms in healthcare workers, consisting of (a) symptoms of re‐experiencing and anxious arousal, (b) symptoms of avoidance and amnesia and (c) symptoms of emotional numbing and dysphoric arousal. Respectively, startle, avoidance of reminders and feeling detached emerged as bridging nodes in these communities. Although yielding highly similar network models, the PTSD symptom structure of healthcare workers showed several unique features compared to the matched control sample. This is informative for interventions aimed at targeting PTSD symptoms in healthcare workers in the context of a public health emergency.
- Subjects
CHINA; JOB stress; POST-traumatic stress disorder; CASE-control method; MENTAL health; AVOIDANCE (Psychology); COVID-19 pandemic; PSYCHOLOGICAL stress; AMNESIA
- Publication
Stress & Health: Journal of the International Society for the Investigation of Stress, 2021, Vol 37, Issue 4, p692
- ISSN
1532-3005
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1002/smi.3027