Intelligence quotient, combat experiences, psychosocial functioning, and depressive symptoms' roles in PTSD symptom severity and treatment completion

Pre-, peri-, and post-deployment factors, including demographic factor, psychological traits, and previous trauma experience, have been hypothesized to influence severity of combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and whether an individual completes a treatment trial. Here we report on the roles of these factors on pretreatment PTSD symptom severity and how these factors affected treatment drop-out in 103 participants enrolled in a previously con-ducted treatment trial for PTSD for these individuals. We found that comorbid depression, IQ, breadth of combat experiences, and psychosocial functioning play significant roles in account-ing for PTSD severity, with those five variables accounting for-51% of the variance, with depressive symptoms (-38% of the variance in CAPS total score), extent of trauma exposure (-5%), IQ (-3%), the index trauma being related to witnessing a threat (-3%), and psychosocial functioning (-2%) contributing significantly. The same factors were investigated to assess their influence on completion of treatment protocols, where higher IQs and less diversity of trauma exposures were associated with a higher completion rate. Thus, the factors contributing to PTSD symptoms and treatment completion are diverse, encompass pre-, peri-, and post trauma conditions, and span the breadth of neurobiological, combat, and psychosocial factors. ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT01391832. (c) 2023 Association Franc,aise de Therapie Comportementale et Cognitive. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.