CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 501COVID-19 and Mental HealthPosttraumatic Stress Disorder ResearchLong-Term Effects of COVID-19

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 57 of the 57 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Why the COVID-19 pandemic is a traumatic stressor

Open access
Bridgland, Victoria M. E., Moeck, Ella K., Green, Deanne M., Swain, Taylor L., Nayda, Diane M., Matson, Lucy A., Hutchison, Nadine P., Takarangi, Melanie K. T.·2021·PLOS ONE
DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0240146PMC PMC7799777

Published version of a preprint

Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic does not fit into prevailing Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) models, or diagnostic criteria, yet emerging research shows traumatic stress symptoms as a result of this ongoing global stressor. Current pathogenic event models focus on past, and largely direct, trauma exposure to certain kinds of life-threatening events. Yet, traumatic stress reactions to future, indirect trauma exposure, and non-Criterion A events exist, suggesting COVID-19 is also a traumatic stressor which could lead to PTSD symptomology. To examine this idea, we asked a sample of online participants ( N = 1,040), in five western countries, to indicate the COVID-19 events they had been directly exposed to, events they anticipated would happen in the future, and other forms of indirect exposure such as through media coverage. We then asked participants to complete the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist-5, adapted to measure pre/peri/post-traumatic reactions in relation to COVID-19. We also measured general emotional reactions (e.g., angry, anxious, helpless), well-being, psychosocial functioning, and depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms. We found participants had PTSD-like symptoms for events that had not happened and when participants had been directly (e.g., contact with virus) or indirectly exposed to COVID-19 (e.g., via media). Moreover, 13.2% of our sample were likely PTSD-positive, despite types of COVID-19 “exposure” (e.g., lockdown) not fitting DSM-5 criteria. The emotional impact of “worst” experienced/anticipated events best predicted PTSD-like symptoms. Taken together, our findings support emerging research that COVID-19 can be understood as a traumatic stressor event capable of eliciting PTSD-like responses and exacerbating other related mental health problems (e.g., anxiety, depression, psychosocial functioning, etc.). Our findings add to existing literature supporting a pathogenic event memory model of traumatic stress.

Overview

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1371/journal.pone.0240146

Cites

57 of 57 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Verification

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Citations

Cites

Show all 56 references

Research works printed but not linked: 6

  1. H Bai, 2018, Evidence that a large amount of low quality responses on MTurk can be detected with repeated GPS coordinates, Internet]
  2. C Stokel-Walker, 2018, Bots on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk are ruining psychology studies [Internet], New Scientist
  3. A Moss, 2018, After the bot scare: Understanding what’s been happening with data collection on MTurk and how to stop it, Internet]
  4. BP Marx, 2019, Brief Inventory of Psychosocial Functioning (B-IPF)
  5. R Molla, 2020, Tech companies tried to help us spend less time on our phones. It didn’t work
  6. P Zachar, 2017, Vagueness, the sorites paradox, and posttraumatic stress disorder. In: International perspectives in philosophy and psychiatry Vagueness in psychiatry, Oxford University Press, 169

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Bridgland, V. M. E., Moeck, E. K., Green, D. M., Swain, T. L., Nayda, D. M., Matson, L. A., Hutchison, N. P., & Takarangi, M. K. T.
Affiliations
Flinders University (AU)
Corresponding author
Takarangi, Melanie K. T.
ORCID
Venue
PLOS ONE
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Published
2021-01-11
Volume
16
Issue
1
Pages
e0240146
ISSN
1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0240146
PMC
PMC7799777
OpenAlex
W3119633778
Cited by
501
References
56
Citations by year
2026: 21 · 2025: 51 · 2024: 83 · 2023: 136 · 2022: 144 · 2021: 65
FWCI
70.90
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Minerva Access (University of Melbourne) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
Funders
Flinders University
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › COVID-19 and Mental Health
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Research
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Clinical Neurology › Long-Term Effects of COVID-19
Keywords
COVID-19 pandemic, post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic stress, indirect trauma exposure, media exposure, PTSD diagnostic criteria, lockdown, anxiety, depression, psychosocial functioning, well-being
MeSH terms
COVID-19, Adolescent, Adult, Aged, Anxiety, Depression, Emotions, Female, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic, Stress, Psychological, Young Adult, Pandemics

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review