National Psychotrauma Conference 2025

Background: Helping professionals who indirectly encounter individuals with trauma are prone to experiencing high work stress. Their roles frequently demand emotional engagement with clients and internalization of clients' experiences, which can lead to secondary traumatic stress (STS). Despite the high risk of STS among responders, STS’ latent symptom structure and the role of protective resources remain understudied. Therefore, this study explored the dimensions of STS and examined the influence of personal, social, and organizational resources on the severity of STS.
Method: Using data involving 293 psychosocial responders assisting families displaced by armed conflict, the latent factor structure of STS was examined using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Multiple regression was calculated to determine the relationship of personal, social, and organizational resources as predictors of the best-fitting STS factor models.
Results: CFA supported a hybrid model of STS with seven interrelated symptom clusters: intrusions, avoidance, negative affect, anhedonia, externalizing behaviors, anxious arousal, and dysphoric arousal. Regression analyses revealed that higher levels of personal, social, and organizational resources were associated with lower STS severity across all symptom groups.
Conclusion: The current findings extend the conceptualization of STS and the role of personal, organizational and social resources. As armed conflicts persist globally, tailored interventions should bolster frontline responders’ support resources while mitigating harmful STS symptoms. Multi-level resources, alongside symptom-focused treatments, are vital to buffering against secondary trauma exposure.

Complex posttraumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) is marked by core PTSD symptoms and disturbances in self-organization (DSO). While the ICD-11 defines CPTSD through two higher-order factors, emerging evidence supports alternative models to the traditional structure. The present study aimed to: (1) identify the best-fitting model of CPTSD symptoms in Filipino combat-exposed soldiers, and (2) examine how posttraumatic cognitions contribute to the expression of these symptoms. Competing models were evaluated using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Posttraumatic cognitions were tested as predictors of each CPTSD symptom cluster in the best-fitting model. The correlated six-factor model demonstrated superior fit compared to alternative models. Posttraumatic cognitions significantly predicted symptoms across both PTSD (intrusions, avoidance, threat) and DSO (affective dysregulation, negative self-concept, relational disturbance). While negative cognitions predicted DSO symptoms, significant associations with PTSD symptoms were also observed. These findings support the conceptual and empirical utility of the six-factor model and suggest that posttraumatic cognitions exert a differential but residual influence across CPTSD symptom clusters. Results align with the Memory & Identity (M&I) theory, which posits that trauma-related cognitions affect both trauma memory processing and self-identity, contributing uniquely to symptom expression.
Keywords: CPTSD, six-factor model, posttraumatic cognitions, Memory & Identity theory, Filipino soldiers, trauma, DSO

Natural disasters often compel communities to evacuate, exposing displaced individuals to challenges that undermine their mental well-being. While increasing studies have shown that post-disaster relocation experiences exacerbate mental health problems, a notable gap remains, most studies focused on relocation difficulties as a whole rather than examining the specific adversities associated with the displacement process itself. This is a critical oversight, as the nuances in post-relocation adversities variably affect relocatees’ mental health. To address this gap, this study developed and validated the Post-Relocation Adversity Scale (PRAS), a psychometric instrument designed to systematically quantify the multifaceted adversities encountered by individuals after forced displacement. Utilizing a multi-stage approach from generating items to rigorous psychometric validation, the EFA results extracted a 3-factor model in sample 1 (n=712; Tropical Storm Washi survivors) and confirmed the same model with a robust CFA fit in sample 2 (n=622; Typhoon Haiyan survivors). The factors are labeled as social resource deficiency, environmental-infrastructure resource deficiency, and financial-income deficiency. Moreover, LCA analysis in sample 2 identified four distinct profiles: low post-disaster relocation adversity, moderate post-disaster relocation adversity, moderate post-disaster relocation adversity with low social resource deficiency, and high post-disaster relocation adversity. Furthermore, the results showed a significantly varied association between the PRAS's three factors and different mental health outcomes. Overall, the results provide evidence for PRAS’s validity, reliability, and utility in assessing post-disaster relocation difficulties. This instrument offers a refined tool for researchers and policymakers to understand and address displacement-related psychological sequelae by developing intervention specific to the domains of adversities.

The Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K-10) is widely utilized to assess non-specific psychological distress. However, when applied to COVID-19 pandemic experiences, its psychometric properties have not been examined. This study investigated the factor structure, reliability, and latent profile of K-10 using data from 3032 Filipino teachers who reflected on their pandemic-related adversity prior to completing K-10. Confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to evaluate five extant models of the K-10’s structure, supporting the two-factor model (i.e., anxiety and depression) as best fitting the data. Both factors showed excellent internal reliability, and criterion-related validity was supported by correlations with anxiety and depression measures. Latent profile analysis revealed a four-class solution, identifying four distinct levels of distress severity. Overall, the contextualized K-10 demonstrated sound psychometric properties, which corroborates and extends its reliability and validity as a measure of pandemic-related distress. Further, the results offer insights into the dimensionality and distress profiles of the K-10 among teachers. Broadly, the findings highlight the importance of valid instruments in assessing contextualized psychological distress.