Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Identifying Potential Differences in Participant Response to CAPS-5 Life Events Checklist Questionnaire Based on Gender

Abstract

Introduction: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a complicated and debilitating psychiatric condition that affects 1 in 3 people who have been exposed to, witnessed, or learned about a traumatic event. Females are almost 2-fold as likely to meet the criteria for PTSD and almost 4-fold as likely than males to develop chronic PTSD. In this pilot study, we examined Life Events Checklist Questionnaire responses from participants who were clinically diagnosed with PTSD to identify if there was a difference in response to checklist questions based on gender. Materials and methods: Study participants (N = 39; n = 17 (43.6%) males; n = 22 (56.4%) females), with a PTSD diagnosis, were recruited in the US between January and June 2019 by PrecisionMed, California, USA. Study participants were matched for age, gender, and ethnicity. A CAPS-5 Life Events Checklist Questionnaire was applied at interview and symptom severity was calculated based on the sum of the participant responses. Results: In total, N = 33 questions from the CAPS-5 Life Events Checklist Questionnaire were addressed to each of the study participants. All but one question was significantly different between males and females; namely, the inability to recall certain aspects of the traumatic event (p < 0.05) (chi square χ2). However, as the patient cohort size was limited (N = 39), we applied a post hoc Bonferroni (α = 0.05/33 = 0.0015) to account for any potential bias in the results. Based on the post hoc analysis, we did not observe any differences in the participant response based on gender. Conclusions: Although the literature identifies gender as a significant risk for PTSD, in this participant cohort, we failed to observe any differences in the subject response to the CAPS-5 Life Events Checklist Questionnaire. The only finding that was significant was that females were 3-times more likely to experience sexual abuse than males. However, it is likely that males are more resistant to report sexual abuse, as was noted in the case report forms.