TY  - JOUR
A1  - Steil, Regina
A1  - Fischer, Anne
A1  - Gutermann, Jana
A1  - Rosner, Rita
T1  - Mental imagery in adolescent PTSD patients after child abuse: a comparison with matched healthy controls
T2  - BMC psychiatry
N2  - Background: Intrusive mental imagery (MI) plays a crucial role in the maintenance of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in adults. Evidence on the characteristics of MI in adolescents suffering from PTSD is sparse. The aim of this study was to thoroughly assess MI in an adolescent sample suffering from PTSD after the experience of childhood sexual abuse and/or childhood physical abuse (CA).
Methods: Thirty-two adolescents with a primary diagnosis of PTSD after CA and 32 adolescents without any mental disorder and without a history of CA, matched for age and gender, completed questionnaires assessing the characteristics of negative and positive MI, as well as images of injury and death that lead to positive emotions (ID-images).
Results: The PTSD group reported significantly more frequent, more vivid, more distressing and more strongly autobiographically linked negative MI compared to the control group. Although positive MI was highly present in both groups (PTSD: 65.6%; controls: 71.9%), no significant differences emerged between the two groups regarding the distinct characteristics of positive MI. The frequency of the ID-images did not significantly differ between the two groups (PTSD: 21.9%; controls: 9.4%), although the ID-images were more vivid in the PTSD group.
Discussion: Negative MI appears to be crucial in adolescent PTSD, whilst positive MI are unexpectedly common in both the PTSD and the control group. The role of positive MI as well as that of ID-images remain unclear. Specific interventions for changing negative MI that are tailored to the developmental challenges in adolescents with PTSD should be developed.
Trial registration: Some of the PTSD patients in this study were also part of a randomized controlled trial on Developmentally adapted Cognitive Processing Therapy (D-CPT). This trial was registered at the German Clinical Trial Registry (GCTR), DRKS00004787, 18 March 2013.
KW  - PTSD
KW  - Negative mental images
KW  - Positive mental images
KW  - Childhood abuse
KW  - Adolescence
KW  - Childhood
Y1  - 2022
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/69527
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-695272
SN  - 1471-244X
N1  - Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. The RCT on D-CPT was supported by grants 01KR1204A and 01KR1204C from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
N1  - The datasets and materials generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
N1  - The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
VL  - 22
IS  - 64
SP  - 1
EP  - 14
PB  - BioMed Central , Springer
CY  - London , Berlin ; Heidelberg
ER  -