The Relationship Between Anxiety Sensitivity and PTSD Symptom Severity Among Trauma-Exposed Inpatient Adolescents

The present study examined the role of anxiety sensitivity in adolescent posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) severity, above and beyond the effects of anxiety, depression, and emotion dysregulation. The four facets of anxiety sensitivity (disease, mental incapacitation, unsteadiness, and social concerns) as contributors to PTSD symptom severity were also assessed. It was hypothesized that anxiety sensitivity would significantly explain variance in PTSD symptom severity above and beyond the effects of the three well-established affective correlates.

Trauma-exposed adolescents recruited from a psychiatric inpatient hospital (N = 50; 52% female; M_age = 15.06 years, SD = 1.41, range = 12–17; 44.0% White) completed a battery of self-report measures.

Hierarchical regression analyses showed that the total anxiety sensitivity score did not account for a significant amount of variance in PTSD symptoms above and beyond the affective correlates. However, the individual facets of anxiety sensitivity accounted for an additional 10.8% of unique variance in PTSD symptoms above and beyond the affective correlates, with the mental incapacitation concerns subscale alone emerging as a significant predictor of PTSD symptoms.

The findings suggest that adolescent psychiatric inpatients may benefit from treatments targeting mental incapacitation concerns.