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915 – Existential Anxiety And Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms In a Sample Of Psychiatric Outpatients

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 April 2020

N. Khodabux ,
C. Tschiedel Belem da Silva ,
P. Birmes ,
L. Schmitt  and
E. Bui
N. Khodabux
Affiliation:
Psychiatrie, Psychothérapies et Art-Thérapie, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Toulouse, Toulouse, France
C. Tschiedel Belem da Silva
Affiliation:
Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil
P. Birmes
Affiliation:
Laboratoire du Stress Traumatique
L. Schmitt
Affiliation:
Psychiatrie et Psychologie Médicale, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Toulouse, Hôpital Casselardit, Toulouse, France
E. Bui
Affiliation:
The Center for Anxiety and Traumatic Stress Disorders, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

Abstract

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Introduction

Existential anxiety (EA) has been described as the anxiety about the meaning of life, death and the necessity to make choices (Tillich, 1953).Although recent research found EA to be associated with trauma and general psychological symptoms in community samples (Weems et al. 2004), to date, no study has investigated its relationship with trauma exposure and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms in psychiatric outpatients.

Objective

To examine the association between EA and self-reported trauma history and PTSD symptoms in psychiatric outpatients.

Methods

Seventy-two stable psychiatric outpatients (mean(SD) age=46.1(14), 55% females) were assessed with the Existential Anxiety Questionnaire (EAQ; score ranging 0-39), the Trauma History Questionnaire which reports on criminal experiences, natural disasters, death exposure and questioning about physical and sexual experiences, and the PTSD Checklist (PCL; score ranging 17-85).

Results

Mean(SD) EAQ and PCL scores were 20.0(7.8) and 40.0(15), respectively. A majority of participants (93%) reported at least one lifetime trauma exposure. Results revealed a positive correlation between existential anxiety and lifetime trauma exposure (r=.28, p< .05).Furthermore, in patients with lifetime trauma exposure, increased EA was associated with increased PCL total score (r=.57, p< .001) as well as with all PTSD symptom clusters: re-experiencing (r=0.45, p < 0.001), hyperarousal (r=.51, p< .001) and avoidance (r=.53, p < .01).

Conclusion

Our findings suggest that EA might be an interesting construct to examine further in the assessment and treatment of PTSD and paves the way for empirical investigations of existential therapies.

Type
Abstract
Information
European Psychiatry , Volume 28 , Issue S1: Abstracts of the 21th European Congress of Psychiatry , 2013 , 28-E360
Copyright
Copyright © European Psychiatric Association 2013
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