The Impact of Social Support on the Relationship between Trauma History and PTSD Symptoms in Motor Vehicle Accident Victims.

Studies have consistently shown that prior exposure to trauma, or trauma history, increases risk for the development of posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms (PTSS) following a subsequent trauma (for meta-analyses see Brewin, Andrews & Valentine, 2000; Ozer, Best, Lipsey & Weiss, 2003). Irish and colleagues (2008), in a prior paper from the present dataset, found that different characteristics/components of trauma history (e.g., including objective measures and victims’ subjective responses) differentially predicted PTSS. Although trauma history has consistently been linked to PTSS, most studies report small-to-medium effect sizes (Ozer et al., 2003). It is possible that other variables may interact with or buffer the relationship between trauma history and PTSS; one such variable that has been repeatedly demonstrated to buffer risk for PTSS is social support. For the current study, we defined social support as a process of providing or exchanging perceived resources to another person (Cohen, Gottleib, & Underwood, 2000). Specific support resources include appraisal support (also known as emotional support) which refers to having someone you can go to about problems, tangible support (also known as instrumental support) referring to practical help when needed (e.g., borrowing money), and belonging support (also known as companionship support) referring to spending time with friends or family (for a review see Wills & Shinar, 2000; Ibarra-Rovillard & Kuiper, 2011). Oftentimes, these studies have operationalized social support as a single construct on a continuum from low to high levels of support (Brewin et al., 2000; Ozer et al., 2003). Further, studies examining social support as a stress-buffer have used either the single construct (Neria, Besser, Kiper, & Westphal, 2010; Babcock, Roseman, Green, & Ross, 2008) or focused on one specific type of support resource (Hyman, Gold, & Cott, 2003). Earlier review articles (Cohen & Wills, 1985; Schaefer, Coyne, & Lazarus, 1981) suggested that some support resources may be better predictors of well-being than others. However, more recent studies comparing the differential efficacy of social support resources at preventing PTSS have been limited. One recent study improved upon these limitations and found that tangible, but not appraisal support buffered the relationship between trauma history and PTSS suggesting the differential effects of different types of social support (Glass, Perrin, Campbell, & Soeken, 2007). However, this study examined a sample of primarily African American women who were the victims of assault. It is still unclear how these findings would generalize to different trauma populations. The purpose of the current study was to assess the extent to which social support buffered against the increased vulnerability to short-term and long-term PTSS afforded by trauma history. More specifically, we sought to determine if the relationship between subjective and objective trauma history and PTSS was diminished by different types of social support (i.e., appraisal, belonging, tangible, and total) in recent victims of motor vehicle accidents (MVAs).