Fear of anxiety as a partial mediator of the relation between trauma severity and PTSD symptoms.

Fear of anxiety has previously been found to be a predictor of overall symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The current exploratory study examines the relationship between fear of anxiety and symptoms of PTSD in a sample of adults exposed to Hurricane Katrina. Fear of anxiety was found to partially mediate the relationship between the severity of trauma and the severity of PTSD. Further, this mediation was found to operate differently by gender, with the mediation holding true for men but not for women. For both men and women, fear of anxiety was positively correlated with PTSD symptoms.