Abstract

Introduction

Materials & Methods

Results

Discussion & Conclusion

References

Discussion
Board

PTSD patients exhibited higher hypnotizability than non-PTSD (7.7 vs. 5.38). This result is consistent with the previous studies reviewed, although it did not reach (p<.1) the conventional level of statistical significance, probably because of the small sample.

PTSD patients also reported that for the most traumatic event during the Gulf War, they had experienced higher levels of anxiety and dissociation than controls (3.2 vs. 1.3; p<.001). And they seemed to continue dissociating more during their everyday lives, as evaluated by the mean of the DES (28.6 vs. 9.6 for controls).

With respect to how much patients dissociated after the presentation of the lists of words, scores on the PDEQ were suggestive that PTSD patients dissociated more than controls (19.8 vs. 13.1, p=.1). Some lists produced more dissociation than others (p=.06) and, as expected, trauma related words produced greater levels of dissociative experience than other lists (18.2 vs 17, 16.6 and 16.2) , especially among PTSD patients.

Analysis of ERP amplitude and latency for P1, P2, P3 and N2 are ongoing at this point. Observation of the ERPs analyzed so far, suggests that, as compared with controls, PTSD patients show an overall lower amplitude for early components (P1, P2 and N2). However, for P3 PTSD patients seem to have substantially higher amplitude than controls for the trauma-related list of words.

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