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Is Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Meaningful in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic? A Response to Van Overmeire's Commentary on Karatzias et al. (2020)

Shevlin, Mark; Hyland, Phil; Karatzias, Thanos

Authors

Mark Shevlin

Phil Hyland



Abstract

In a recently published study in this journal that used a population‐based sample in the Republic of Ireland (Karatzias et al., 2020), we concluded that 17.7% of the sample met the diagnostic requirements for COVID‐19–related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Subsequently, Van Overmeire (2020) has raised concerns about the validity of our findings, arguing that simply experiencing the COVID‐19 pandemic is not sufficient to meet the trauma exposure criterion for a PTSD diagnosis and, consequently, our estimated PTSD prevalence figure was inflated. In this response, we provide (a) an explanation for why the COVID‐19 pandemic can be reasonably considered to be a traumatic event, (b) evidence that PTSD in response to the COVID‐19 pandemic is a meaningful construct, and (c) an argument for why our estimated prevalence rate is not unreasonably high.

Citation

Shevlin, M., Hyland, P., & Karatzias, T. (2020). Is Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Meaningful in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic? A Response to Van Overmeire's Commentary on Karatzias et al. (2020). Journal of Traumatic Stress, 33(5), 866-868. https://doi.org/10.1002/jts.22592

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Sep 11, 2020
Online Publication Date Oct 2, 2020
Publication Date 2020-10
Deposit Date Oct 5, 2020
Publicly Available Date Oct 5, 2020
Print ISSN 0894-9867
Electronic ISSN 1573-6598
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 33
Issue 5
Pages 866-868
DOI https://doi.org/10.1002/jts.22592
Public URL http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/2688241

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Is Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Meaningful In The Context Of The COVID-19 Pandemic? A Response To Van Overmeire's Commentary On Karatzias Et Al. (2020) (185 Kb)
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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.





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