Citation

Orcutt HK, Bonanno GA, Hannan SM, Miron LR. J. Trauma. Stress 2014; 27(3): 249-256.

Affiliation

Northern Illinois University, Department of Psychology, DeKalb, Illinois, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1002/jts.21914

PMID

24819209

Abstract

In a sample with known levels of preshooting posttraumatic stress (PTS) symptoms, we examined the impact of a campus mass shooting on trajectories of PTS in the 31 months following the shooting using latent growth mixture modeling. Female students completed 7 waves of a longitudinal study (sample sizes ranged from 812 to 559). We identified 4 distinct trajectories (n = 660): (a) minimal impact-resilience (60.9%), (b) high impact-recovery (29.1%), (c) moderate impact-moderate symptoms (8.2%), and (d) chronic dysfunction (1.8%). Individuals in each trajectory class remained at or returned to preshooting levels of PTS approximately 6 months postshooting. The minimal impact-resilience class reported less prior trauma exposure (η(2) =.13), less shooting exposure (η(2) =.07), and greater emotion regulation skills than all other classes (η(2) >.30). The chronic dysfunction class endorsed higher rates of experiential avoidance prior to the shooting than the minimal-impact resilient and high impact-recovery classes (η(2) =.15), as well as greater shooting exposure than the high impact-recovery class (η(2) =.07).

FINDINGS suggest that preshooting functioning and emotion regulation distinguish between those who experience prolonged distress following mass violence and those who gradually recover.

Language: en