Anxiety Sensitivity: New Directions for Understanding PTSD and Related Conditions

How does posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) develop and why do some individuals experience greater chronicity? Despite decades of research, PTSD remains among the most serious public health concerns both in the United States and globally, underscoring the need to better elucidate the explanatory mechanisms. Anxiety Sensitivity (AS) is one such mechanism that may contribute to the development and exacerbation of PTSD symptoms. AS is a trait-like factor that has been implicated in PTSD by predisposing some individuals to have exaggerated responses to stress. This talk will describe these processes along with the impact of attentional control, which plays an important role in amplifying and maintaining PTSD symptomology over time. These new findings suggest that this relationship is more complex than previously thought. I will review my work using event-related potentials (ERPs) and multi-level modeling to examine how these constructs help us understand who experiences greater PTSD symptoms and when these symptoms are exacerbated. I will then discuss the implications that this research has for understanding and predicting other psychopathology often co-morbid with PTSD (e.g., suicidal thoughts and behaviors, substance use) as well as discuss future directions.