Although health care spending in the U.S. will likely increase by 25% by 2030 due to lack of understanding of how to preserve older adults'health (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and The Merck Company Foundation, 2007), ethnically diverse older women are a highly neglected research population. They are particularly ignored in research on the links among trauma exposure, PTSD, and health. Limited knowledge of these clinical issues could be contributing to the high utilization and related cost of health care for this mainly economically disadvantaged population, as older women with unaddressed PTSD symptoms often have unexplained somatic symptomatology, which leads to consulting doctors frequently and with discouraging results (van Zelst et al., 2006). Thus, investigating their trauma exposure, PTSD, and related health has the potential to save money, energy, and visits to doctors, among many other benefits. To fill several gaps in the ethnogeriatric literature, this study's aims are: (1) to assess the prevalence of PTSD and investigate the relationship between lifetime traumatic experiences and PTSD symptomatology in a non-clinical sample of multiethnic older women;(2) to validate a new post-traumatic stress screen for use in fast-paced medical settings using a sample of ethnically diverse older women, and (3) to test a model examining the relationship between lifetime traumatic experiences and health in community-dwelling older women accounting for a variety of potential protective factors. To this end, the research team will recruit approximately 230 community-dwelling women age 65 or older from diverse ethnic backgrounds. In a manner that will minimize fatigue and attrition, we will assess respondents using a clinical battery that includes multiple measures of trauma exposure, PTSD symptomatology, psychosocial and cultural resources, as well as health (physical and mental). The PTSD and health models proposed in Aims 1 and 3 are based on relevant theoretical and empirical literature;testing of such models will occur through application of structural equation modeling procedures. The main hypotheses are that the 2 models are valid, thus explaining a significant amount of variance in PTSD and health, respectively, and that our screen is a reliable and valid tool, upon validating it against the full-length PTSD measure from which it was derived, the DEQ (Kubany et al., 2000) and the gold standard of PTSD assessment, the CAPS (Blake et al., 1990). Our main long-term goal is to make a strong contribution to the development of health risk profiles and interventions that could positively impact health in our understudied population. )

Public Health Relevance

In this study, we will assess PTSD prevalence, test a trauma exposure-PTSD model, validate a brief post- traumatic stress measure, and develop a preliminary health model within the context of trauma exposure in our target population, i.e., primarily economically disadvantaged, ethnically diverse older women. Because there is practically no research available on PTSD and its relationship to trauma exposure in our population of interest, knowledge from this research could minimize the occurrence of health professionals dismissing or under- diagnosing PTSD in our target population and our screen will allow the quick identification of the presence of PTSD symptomatology warranting further in-depth assessment. Moreover, our health model will clarify connections between health and a variety of factors within the context of trauma exposure that are amenable to clinical intervention, hopefully contributing to decreasing (a) doctors'visits for unexplained somatic symptoms related to PTSD symptomatology, and (b) associated high health care costs.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS)
Type
Research Continuance Award (SC3)
Project #
1SC3GM094075-01
Application #
7940790
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZGM1-MBRS-8 (BH))
Program Officer
Okita, Richard T
Project Start
2010-07-01
Project End
2014-06-30
Budget Start
2010-07-01
Budget End
2011-06-30
Support Year
1
Fiscal Year
2010
Total Cost
$108,750
Indirect Cost
Name
California State University Northridge
Department
Psychology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
055752331
City
Northridge
State
CA
Country
United States
Zip Code
91330
Alpizar, David; Laganá, Luciana; Plunkett, Scott W et al. (2018) Evaluating the eight-item Patient Health Questionnaire's psychometric properties with Mexican and Central American descent university students. Psychol Assess 30:719-728
Laganá, Luciana; Gavrilova, Larisa; Carter, Delwin B et al. (2017) A Randomized Controlled Study on the Effects of a Documentary on Students' Empathy and Attitudes towards Older Adults. Psychol Cogn Sci 3:79-88
Laganá, Luciana; Arellano, Kimberly; Alpizar, David (2017) Cognitive Functioning, Health Screening Behaviors and Desire to Improve One's Health in Diabetic versus Healthy Older Women. J Adv Med Med Res 23:
Laganà, Luciana; Prilutsky, Roxanne R (2016) A Pilot Psychometric Study on the Validation of the Older Women's Non-Medical Stress Scale (OWN-MSS) on an Ethnically Diverse Sample. J Geriatr Palliat Care 4:
Alamdari, Golnar; Laganà, Luciana (2015) The Relationship of Older Adults' Physical Pain to Depression and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): A Review. J Geriatr Med Gerontol 1:
Mamikonian-Zarpas, Ani; Laganá, Luciana (2015) The Relationship between Older Adults' Risk for a Future Fall and Difficulty Performing Activities of Daily Living. J Aging Gerontol 3:8-16
Maciel, Michelle; Laganà, Luciana (2014) Older women's sexual desire problems: biopsychosocial factors impacting them and barriers to their clinical assessment. Biomed Res Int 2014:107217
Laganà, Luciana; Bloom, David William; Ainsworth, Andrew (2014) Urinary incontinence: its assessment and relationship to depression among community-dwelling multiethnic older women. ScientificWorldJournal 2014:708564
Lagana, Luciana; Fobair, Patricia; Spiegel, David (2014) Targeting the Psychosexual Challenges Faced by Couples with Breast Cancer: Can Couples Group Psychotherapy Help? J Womens Health Care 3:
Laganá, Luciana; White, Theresa; Bruzzone, Daniel E et al. (2013) Exploring the Sexuality of African American Older Women. Br J Med Med Res 4:1129-1148

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