Psychophysiological responses to an executive task in refugees with chronic PTSD and comorbid depression
Sammanfattning
This study investigates the changes in physiological responses in immigrants/refugees with
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and comorbid depression when exposed to an executive
task. Method: Twenty-two individuals with PTSD following war exposure from their country of
origin and 23 control subjects with similar experiences but without psychiatric diagnosis were
recruited for this study. Participants were tested with the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST)
as part of an extensive neuropsychological test battery. Cardiovascular activity and skin conductance
were measured to the performance on the WCST. Results: Executive impairments were
related to increase in PTSD-symptoms. Low level of skin conductance was related to executive
problems, but analyses of the relations between subjective, cognitive, and physiological measurements
were inconclusive. Conclusion: The results show that executive impairments in PTSD
are related to chronic PTSD, to elevated post-traumatic symptoms, and to depression after trauma
exposure. Our findings do not however, show much cross-system reactivity across the different
psychophysical measures. The results contradict with the hypotheses of multi system stress
response and generalized arousal which imply a strong correlation across the subjective, cognitive,
and autonomic systems in PTSD.