Prevalence of traumatic events and posttraumatic stress symptoms in a student sample in Poland.

The study investigated the prevalence of traumatic events and posttraumatic symptoms among university level students in Poland. Data was collected from 475 students: 69% women and 30% men, mean age 22.9. The measures included SLESQ, Mississippi-C Scale, IES and BDI. At least one traumatic event (according to DSM-IV) was reported by 75.6% of the studied group. Prevalence of traumatic events was higher for men than for women. Life threatening accidents, child physical abuse, traumatic bereavement, witnessing death/assault and adult physical assault/abuse were the most commonly experienced events in the whole group. There were differences in prevalence rates of specific types of traumatic events between men and women. The level of posttraumatic events between groups with different levels of exposure to trauma was analysed, as well as between the group of persons who experienced particular types of traumatic events as compared with the group of subjects with no exposure to this type of trauma.