Traumatic events in Psychology college students and current post-traumatic symptomatology, depression, anxiety and stress

The aim of this work was to study the influence of a history of traumatic events, their type and characteristics, and personal factors on current post-traumatic symptomatology, depression, anxiety and stress among college students of psychology. Four hundred thirty-two college students completed a questionnaire of traumatic events and scales of depression, anxiety, stress and posttraumatic symptomatology. Current symptomatology was associated with the following variables: having a history of traumatic events, having suffered maltreatment/abuse/rape or a traumatic experience that the person refuses to tell, having experienced more than one type of traumatic event or more than one event, and having perceived the worst event as highly traumatic. The last three were the most important variables. Non-sexual violent crimes and intentional traumatic events were not associated with increased symptomatology. Results suggest that most college students, like other people, show great resilience to traumatic events, although this ability is more easily overwhelmed given certain characteristics of the events and the person.