The impact of post-traumatic stress disorder symptomatology on quality of life: the sentinel experience of anger, hypervigilance and restricted affect

Background: It is unclear which specific symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder are related to poor perceived quality of life.

Objective: To investigate the influence of post-traumatic stress disorder symptomatology on quality of life in traumatic injury survivors.

Method: Traumatic injury survivors completed questionnaires on post-traumatic stress disorder symptomatology and quality of life at 3 months (n = 987), 12 months (n = 862), 24 months (n = 830) and 6 years (n = 613) post trauma.

Results: Low quality of life was reported by 14.5% of injury survivors at 3 months and 8% at 6 years post event. The post-traumatic stress disorder symptom clusters that contributed most to poor perceived quality of life were numbing and arousal, the individual symptoms that contributed most were anger, hypervigilance and restricted affect.

Conclusions: There was variability in the quality of life of traumatic injury survivors in the 6 years following trauma and a consistent proportion reported low quality of life. Early intervention to reduce anger, hypervigilance and restricted affect symptoms may provide a means to improving the quality of life of traumatic injury survivors.