Trauma, personality function, and posttraumatic reactions: A retrospective and prospective study of traumatized refugee patients

In her thesis, Marianne Opaas investigates the implications of adverse childhood experiences, potentially traumatic experiences of war and human rights violations (HRVs), and personality factors for the mental health and wellbeing of adult refugee patients before, during, and after treatment. The study comprised 54 multi-traumatized patients with histories as refugees and trauma survivors. The results indicate that adverse childhood experiences were even more strongly related to present mental health problems and reduced quality of life than these adult patients’ more recent war- and human rights violation trauma. Furthermore, trauma-related difficulties with reality testing, of a mainly perceptual nature, were related to the suffering and reduced function experienced by these refugee patients and to their trajectories towards improvement or deterioration after therapy start. The difficulties with perceptual reality testing were found by a factor analysis of the participants’ results on personality assessment by the Rorschach method.