Poster #21 - Associations between Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms and Health Risk Behaviors during the transition to Young Adulthood

• In Event: Poster Session 10

Abstract

Children and youth in the United States are exposed to a high rate of potentially traumatic events (PTE), including (including child maltreatment, parent substance use, and loss; Finkelhor et al., 2015) Posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) are a common result of exposure to PTEs. If left untreated, PTSS often lead to anxiety, depression, substance use, and suicide attempts. Yet only 16% of youth receive a clinical diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (Alisic et al., 2014), suggesting possible heterogeneity in within person variation in PTSS. Indeed, a recent longitudinal study by our team, we elucidated within person heterogeneity in PTSS in a sample of female adolescents who have experienced myriad of PTEs, including substantiated physical and/or sexual abuse, and/or neglect and/or at least one self-reported alternative PTE (e.g., witnessed violence, parent substance use) using growth mixture modeling. Three trajectories of PTSS were identified: recovery trajectory (55%), chronic moderate trajectory (25%), and chronic high trajectory (19%) (see Figure 1).
Next, we hope to understand how these trajectories of PTSS are associated with health risk behaviors, namely risky sexual behaviors and substance use, during the transition to adulthood (age 19). Young adults are prone to increased engagement in health risk behaviors due to increases in sensation seeking and reward sensitivity, and chronic PTSS may promote maladaptive coping behaviors as youth act to decrease feelings of distress via short-term soothing techniques (e.g., substance use) over more adaptive regulatory strategies. Our planned analysis is to use PTSS trajectory membership as a fixed class grouping variable to determine how associations between key transition to adulthood outcomes, including risky sexual behaviors and substance use, differ by PTTS trajectories.
The sample includes 514 female adolescents from a Mid-west region of the US. Adolescents participated in annual assessments for up to four years or until age 19 (Mage = 15.27 at Time 1). Maltreated adolescents (n=275) had substantiated physical neglect, physical abuse, or sexual abuse within the past 12 months. A comparison group of adolescent females (n=239) was demographically matched to at least one maltreated adolescent based on race/ethnicity, household income, age, and family constellation.
We will conduct a multiple group model using the LSLX package in R to determine how engagement in risky sexual behaviors and substance use at age 19 (controlling for previous levels) and associations between these two constructs differ by PTSS trajectory following trauma. LSLX is a package for fitting semi-confirmatory structural equation modeling (SEM) via penalized likelihood (PL).
Results will elucidate how heterogeneity in PTSS trajectories following PTE(s) influence health risk behaviors during the pivotal developmental period of young adulthood. Given that engagement in health risk behaviors has long-lasting maladaptive social and health consequences, and may be exacerbated by exposure to PTEs, results will shed light on processes that cascade into risk for engagement in health risk behaviors with implications for identifying promising intervention points to best serve trauma survivors.

Authors

• Toria Herd, Pennsylvania State University, University Park
  Presenting Author

• Zachary Fisher

• Jennie G. Noll, Pennsylvania State University, University Park