Archival ReportIncreased Anxiety During Anticipation of Unpredictable Aversive Stimuli in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder but not in Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Section snippets
Participants
Sixteen medication-free PTSD patients (9 women and 7 men; mean ± SD age, 34.5 ± 12.4 years), 18 GAD patients (14 women and 4 men; mean ± SD age, 34.0 ± 10.5 years), and 34 healthy control subjects (25 women and 9 men; mean ± SD age, 30.2 ± 8.5 years) participated in the study. Mean age did not significantly differ across groups [F(1,62) = .9, ns). The patients met DSM-IV criteria for PTSD or GAD as assessed by the Structural Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders (SCID-I) (21).
Startle Magnitude
Startle data (raw and T scores) are presented in Table 1. Overall startle magnitudes (raw scores) appear larger in the PTSD group compared with the other groups, but this effect was not significant [omnibus ANOVA (group [3] × condition [2] × cue [cue, no cue]): F(2,62) = 1.6, ns].
Discussion
As hypothesized, PTSD patients compared with GAD patients and healthy control subjects displayed heightened anxiety during periods of unpredictable, but not predictable, threat. Specifically, startle potentiation during the no-cue period of the unpredictable versus neutral condition—reflecting heightened contextual anxiety—was observed only in the PTSD group. In contrast, fear-potentiated startle to the threat cue predictably signaling the aversive events was increased to the same extent in the
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