Ethnicity

How is ethnicity related to risk for PTSD?

Personal characteristics can influence one’s degree of risk for developing PTSD. How such personal characteristics may effect the development of PTSD would be influenced by other personal characteristics as well as differences in the trauma experience itself.

What is the evidence for ethnicity and risk for PTSD?

Moderate to high quality evidence found a small association between increased risk of PTSD following childbirth in White vs. other participants.

Moderate to low quality evidence found a small association between increased PTSD symptoms following Hurricane Katrina and increased minority ethnicity.

Moderate quality evidence found the rate of PTSD was higher in Black samples than in White samples (49% vs. 29%) after road traffic accidents.

Moderate to high quality evidence found a small association between increased PTSD symptoms following any trauma in children and adolescents and increased Black or minority ethnicity.

Moderate to high quality evidence found no association between ethnicity and PTSD symptoms in professionals indirectly exposed to trauma through their therapeutic work with trauma victims.

August 2021

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Last updated at: 4:24 pm, 6th April 2022
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Fact Sheet Technical Commentary
Tags:  Ethnicity

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