Assessing long-term effects of trauma: diagnosing symptoms of avoidance and numbing.

OBJECTIVE

This study compared the discovery of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms by means of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R (SCID) with a semistructured, psychodynamic clinical interview in a long-term follow-up of the survivors of the Buffalo Creek (W.Va.) flood.

METHOD

Videotaped semistructured, psychodynamic clinical interviews of a small group of survivors (N=6) were compared with the results obtained in a prior group-level SCID investigation.

RESULTS

Seventy-two percent of the total PTSD symptoms for the subjects studied were elicited exclusively by the psychodynamic clinical interview. PTSD cluster C symptoms of avoidance and numbing of general responsiveness were especially sensitive to discovery by this method.

CONCLUSIONS

The psychodynamic clinical interview should be included in the design of studies that seek to investigate long-term effects of trauma, which are especially likely to be manifest in negative symptoms and subtle character change.