Partners

Traumatic stress societies around the world have decided to join forces in order to enhance knowledge about psychotrauma around the world. The traumatic stress societies agreed to work alongside each other on an equal basis. The latest society to join was the:  Korean Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (KSTSS)

Themes   

1. Resilience and recovery in adult survivors of childhood maltreatment
2. Forcibly displaced persons
3. Global prevalence of stress and trauma related disorders
4. Socio-emotional development across cultures
5. Collaborating to make traumatic stress research data “FAIR”
6. Global crises (COVID-19)
7. Treatments across cultures

Below a few highlights of ongoing activities

We Like to Share

The FAIR Data Theme workgroup is launching an international survey to understand researchers’ current practices and opinions regarding data sharing and re-use. Thanks to the efforts of many individuals and society partners, it is available in 7 languages (Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, English, French, Japanese, Korean, Spanish).Results will help us create useful tools and resources to promote FAIR data practices in our field.

Please help us promote the survey to researchers and research trainees in your societies and in your professional networks - this is the survey home page. 

Questions? Contact Nancy Kassam-Adams: adamsn@chop.edu.

FUTURE - ReFUgees TraUmatic stress REsearch network

The Global Collaboration of Traumatic Stress is establishing a worldwide network of researchers in the field of traumatic stress in refugees, migrants, and displaced populations.

The aim of establishing the FUTURE network is to facilitate collaboration and exchange between researchers worldwide who are conducting studies in refugee and displaced populations and to connect research teams working in humanitarian settings, low-resource settings, and high income settings. We encourage to share data, knowledge, expertise, instruments and tools.

Please contact Marit Sijbrandij: e.m.sijbrandij@vu.nl.

Child Maltreatment: identifying Socio-Emotional Consequences

Childhood maltreatment (abuse and neglect) has long-term effects on mental and physical health. It also negatively impacts social functioning, which, in turn, is closely linked to health and well-being. Projects under this topic will mainly use experimental methods to assess cognitive, behavioral, physiological and emotional aspects of social functioning and interpersonal interactions. 

Child Maltreatment through a Cross-Cultural Lens

While the WHO definition of child maltreatment covers a wide range of behaviors, thresholds for what is considered child maltreatment vary in different cultures. For example, in some countries, corporal punishment is considered a valid parenting practice while it is not in many others. The aim of this project is threefold. First, it aims to better understand the cross-cultural variations in what constitutes child maltreatment and in the impact of parenting behaviors on children’s development and mental health. Second, it aims to identify the most appropriate means to assess child maltreatment and its effects on mental health in different cultures. Third, it aspires to identify culture specific protective factors, increasing resilience in at-risk populations.

Looking for collaborators

Interested? Please contact Eleonora Bartoli at Bartoli@psych.uni-frankfurt.de

COVID-19 related projects

Some highlights on this theme led by Tatiana Davidson and Sara Freedman below, more on all nine projects here.

High-Risk Occupational Groups Responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic

This project let by Talya Greene and colleagues aims to collate and develop globally transferable guidance for the psychosocial support of high-risk occupational groups responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Data is being collected from UK health and social care workers on PTSD, depression, anxiety, and moral injury. The baseline wave consisted of 1100 participants. Follow up data is being collected from this cohort every 6 weeks with around 400 participants at each wave.  Two publications are available (Billings et al., 2020; Greene et al., 2020).

COVID-19 Unmasked: Young Child

The COVID-19 Unmasked: Young Child research project, led by Alex Young (Alex.DeYoung@health.qld.gov.au), was launched in Australia to help understand and track the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health and wellbeing of young children (1-5 years) and their caregivers. The first report of findings from the COVID-19 Unmasked study included data on 776 caregivers in Australia and is accessible on the study website. The second report, focusing on the impact of the second lockdown in Australian (N = 373) is about to be released.  For key findings read more here.

Cross-Cultural responses to COVID-19 vs other traumatic events (GPS-CCC)

The GPS-CCC study, including over 7000 participants, has shown that ·the mental health impact of COVID-19-related stressors is slightly more severe than that of other stressful events. The impact of COVID-19 differs across the world and depends on the COVID-19 burden of a country COVID-19 (Olff et al., 2021).We also created a video abstract for this study

Network analyses (Williamsen et al., under review) and papers on text-mining and of elderly participants are in prep).

GPS-CCC has also provided us with cross-cultural data and norm scores for the GPS which will be posted on the website in line with FAIR data principle.

Global Psychotrauma Screen in 27 languages

The GPS has been further translated in Slovak and Swahili and is currently available in 27 languages: Afrikaans, Arabic, Armenian, Chinese, Croatian, Dutch, English, Farsi/Persion, French, Georgian, German, Greek, Hebrew, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (European), Portuguese Brazilian), Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Spanish (Argentinian), Swahili, Turkish, Xhosa, and more (African) languages soon (see GPS page).

Global Psychotrauma Screen Child (GPS-C) and Teen (GPS-T) 

A project group led by Emma Grace revised the English GPS adult version for children and teenagers with a four-round Delphi consensus study. A semantic adaptation study of the GPS-C and GPS-T with children and teenagers has been completed (Grace et al., 2021). The GPS-C and GPS-T has currently been translated into over 10 languages (see GPS-C & GPS-T).

Treatments across Cultures 

Trauma is not limited by national borders. Importantly, in spite of a lot of overlap and commonalities, traumatic experiences, trauma-related symptoms, as well as treatment approaches differ across geographic regions and cultures.

Therefore, the latest theme added and led by Debra Kaysen (dkaysen@stanford.edu) addresses: 

Interventions and treatments for trauma-related disorders across cultures

The COVID-19 Mental Health Research Network

Upcoming events

ESTSS virtual conference:

Trauma and mental health during the global pandemic

17-18 June 2021

Virtual Annual Convention of the CPA June 7-25:

• Martine Hébert, past winner of the Excellence in Psychology Award: Child Sexual Abuse: Looking Back and Moving Forward 
• Symposium (Rachel Langevin): Intergenerational Continuity of Child Maltreatment 

Find all events on traumatic stress here: