Authors:

Marielle Gomez

Date Created:

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About Paper:

Suicide is a serious public health issue. Preexisting psychopathology, such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), has been established as a risk factor for suicidal thoughts and engaging in self- injurious and suicidal behavior. While PTSD has been consistently linked to increased risk for self- injurious thoughts and behaviors (i.e., SITBs), traditional statistical methods may be too limited to capture the complexities of both PTSD and SITBs and the mechanisms that connect and maintain their comorbidity. Network analysis is a statistical method that can better model the complexities of PTSD and SITBs and help identify how the two are connected. Several exploratory networks on PTSD and SITBs have been estimated; however, to date, replication of these exploratory network structures has not been conducted. Thus, in the current study, we estimated an exploratory network of PTSD symptoms and SITBs in a trauma-exposed community sample (N=893) to determine which symptoms of PTSD and SITBs "bridge" the two psychological phenomena using measures of bridge centrality. Then, the replicability of findings from the exploratory network was assessed by employing a network comparison test (i.e., statistical measures of invariance between two network models) with a second community sample of trauma-exposed participants (N=367). The PTSD symptoms of engaging in reckless or self- destructive behavior and having negative beliefs about the self, world, and others and the SITB symptom of suicidal ideation emerged as having among the highest bridge centrality measures across both samples. Further, all measures of network invariance were not significant, indicating replicability of results. By furthering our understanding of how PTSD and SITBs are linked, our study findings help to identify the key symptoms that maintain PTSD and SITBs to target with interventions and reduce the risk of death by suicide.

Source:

Auburn University / College of Liberal Arts / 2025

Topics:

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Co-authors:

Marielle Gomez