Zeitschrift für Depression und Angst
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Survey of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) With PTSD Checklist-Civilian (PCL-C) Questionnaire on Outpatients at Two Mental Health Clinics in New York City

Baowu Wang and Seeth Vivek

Objective: To estimate the prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among psychiatric outpatients via a questionnaire and compare it to the prevalence recorded in patient’s chart.
Method: A total of 62 adult patients were recruited voluntarily from two outpatient clinics in the inner city of New York City. These participants filled out the Traumatic Life Events Questionnaire (TLEQ) and the PTSD Check List Civilian Version (PCL-C) Questionnaire. Then, their charts were reviewed to collect demographic data, traumatic life events, diagnoses, and treatments.
Results: Among these 62 participants, there were significantly more reports of traumatic life events in the survey than in the charts, 86% vs. 22% (P<0.01) and there were more reports of severe PTSD symptoms than in the chart, 61% vs. 11% (P<0.01).
Conclusions: Trauma and PTSD might be under-recognized in outpatient psychiatric care. Psychiatrists should be more vigilant for trauma and PTSD. However, caution has to be taken when extrapolating the results to other populations because the internal validity of this study needs to be verified via the gold-standard method Clinician Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS) and the external validity of this study is limited to the specific population characteristics of this study.