title: Relationship of early-life trauma, war-related trauma, personality traits, and PTSD symptom severity: a retrospective study on female civilian victims of war.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Consequences of war-related traumatisation have mostly been investigated in military and predominant male populations, while research on female civilian victims of war has been neglected. Furthermore, research of post-war posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in women has rarely included early-life trauma in their prediction models, so the contribution of trauma in childhood and early youth is still unexplored.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To examine the relationship of early-life trauma, war-related trauma, personality traits, and symptoms of posttraumatic stress among female civilian victims of the recent war in Croatia.
  
  
  METHODS
  The cross-sectional study included 394 participants, 293 war-traumatised adult women civilians, and 101 women without war-related trauma. Participants were recruited using the snowball sampling method. The applied instruments included the Clinician-Administrated PTSD Scale (CAPS), the NEO Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO-PI-R), the War Stressors Assessment Questionnaire (WSAQ), and the Early Trauma Inventory Self Report-Short Form (ETISR-SF). A hierarchical multiple regression analysis was performed to assess the prediction model of PTSD symptom severity measured by CAPS score for current PTSD.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The prevalence of current PTSD (CAPS cut-off score=65) in this cohort was 20.7%. The regression model that included age, early-life trauma, war-related trauma, neuroticism, and extraversion as statistically significant predictors explained 45.8% of variance in PTSD symptoms.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Older age, exposure to early-life trauma, exposure to war-related traumatic events, high neuroticism, and low extraversion are independent factors associated with higher level of PTSD symptoms among women civilian victims of war.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychological Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Rijeka, Rijeka, Croatia; stevanovic.aleksandra@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Aleksandra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Stevanović
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychological Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Rijeka, Rijeka, Croatia.
authors.forename: Tanja
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Frančišković
authors.affiliation: Military Mental Health Research, Department of Defence, Utrecht, The Netherlands.|Department of Psychiatry, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands.|Arq Psychotrauma Research Group, Diemen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Vermetten
keywords: PTSD; War; civilian victims of war; female; personality traits