title: [Self-assessment of post-traumatic stress reactions in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City. A survey among medical students].
abstract: The present paper describes psychological sequelae of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York City in a cohort of 174 medical students (104 females, 70 men, age 18 to 37 years) in their first academic year at the University of Kiel,Germany. For self-report of traumatic stress reactions,the Revised Impact of Event Scale (IES-R) was administered 6 and 9 weeks after the disaster. The students reported weak to moderate levels of distress, the average IES-R scores on the intrusion and avoidance subscales were 11.1 (SD 6.2) and 10.6 (SD 6.4), respectively, and 5.2 (SD 4.1) for the hyperarousal scale. All symptoms had clearly faded at 9 weeks. Students with traumatic life events indicated significantly higher scores in some avoidance items. The current data suggest that the IES-R can be used as a screening measure in future research of trauma-related stress reactions also in people exposed to catastrophes by media coverage.
authors.affiliation: Institut für Medizinische Psychologie, Universität Kiel, Kiel. strenge@med-psych.uni-kiel.de
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Strenge
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000401:Aircraft; D001143:Arousal; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D005858:Germany; D006801:Humans; D008016:Life Change Events; D008297:Male; D008432:Mathematical Computing; D009519:New York City; D010555:Personality Inventory / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012647:Self-Assessment; D013313:Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D013337:Students, Medical / Q000523:psychology*; D023481:Terrorism / Q000523:psychology*