Unburdened by false humility, postmodern trauma activists claim to have understood for the first time what drives all of human suffering
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Trauma DispatchTrauma news you can't get anywhere else. |
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CATEGORY: CONTROL OF LANGUAGE AND IDEAS Karen-Inge Karstoft, PhD Source: Journal of Affective Disorders Read time: 2.5 minutes This Happened Complex PTSD was invented in 1992 on the premise that certain types of events were more damaging than single-event traumas by being repeated and prolonged (a dose-response theory) and interpersonal in nature. In the December 2024 issue, the Journal of Affective Disorders published a study claiming to show that being a civilian refugee with indirect exposure to war qualified as one of those extremely damaging types of events. Who Did This? Psychologist Karen-Inge Karstoft is an associate professor at the University of Copenhagen, and has published 15 first-author and approximately 36 secondary-author research articles, mostly on trauma or PTSD. The Claim Researchers sent requests to participate in their research study to all 18,389 adult Ukrainian refugees registered in Denmark. They received completed electronic surveys from 6,761 individuals. The types of experiences that counted as exposure to war included hometown was affected by war (with or without damage to their own homes), witnessed first-hand or just heard about combat, and lost a family member or close friend due to war. Using ICD-11 diagnostic criteria, they found that 15.9% fulfilled criteria for PTSD but not complex PTSD, and 13.5% fulfilled criteria for both PTSD and complex PTSD. They tested the dose-response premise by predicting that exposure to more war events would lead to more diagnoses of complex PTSD. This was not supported. Of the seven types of war exposure they measured, four significantly associated with PTSD, but only two significantly associated with complex PTSD. The also tested the interpersonal premise by predicting that interpersonal trauma events prior to the war would lead to more diagnoses of complex PTSD. This was not supported. The authors claimed, however, this was supported with a misleading interpretation of their data: The odds ratio of interpersonal events with PTSD was 1.17, and for complex PTSD was 1.44, both of which were significant and similar in magnitude to each other. The authors asserted that 1.44 was higher than 1.17, but they did not conduct a significance test. Analysis There are multiple major flaws in this study. First, researchers did not gather information on whether events were repeated, prolonged, or interpersonal. These qualities seem to have been assumed. Second, their assessment method did not determine the onset of any symptoms in relation to war exposure. They have no idea if PTSD symptoms, or the so-called complex PTSD symptoms, were present before or after war started. Third, they used self-report questionnaires which are prone to false positive diagnoses. The researchers nevertheless expressed zero reservations about the existence of complex PTSD in this sample.
The absurdity of the evidence claimed by complex PTSD activists is described here and here. The proposed disorder was rejected by both DSM-IV and DSM-5 due to absence of evidence, but the ICD adopted it in 2019 for political reasons. Despite the absence of validity, researchers frequently add new populations that allegedly have high rates of complex PTSD including prisoners in jail, gang members, violent criminals, prisoners of war, foster care children, soldiers, refugees without war exposure, domestic violence victims, police officers, North Korean defectors, and cardiac surgery patients. As I wrote in my book, “The fundamental appeal of complex PTSD is moral, not scientific. To believe in complex PTSD is to believe in a mission to save weaker, disadvantaged people from being victims of stronger perpetrators. By supporting this mission, the believer is imbued with higher moral status. That is the true value of complex PTSD.” [1] The most enduring lesson of the complex PTSD scandal is that in the social sciences, where manipulation of soft data and misleading interpretations are chronic affronts, the most concerning aspect is that researchers seem to easily believe their own deceptions. REFERENCES [1] Scheeringa, M. S. The Trouble With Trauma: The Search to Discover How Beliefs Become Facts. (Central Recovery Press, 2022). Comments are closed.
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