Trauma typologies and internalizing psychopathology: A hierarchical perspective on the unique role of congruent and incongruent criterion a stressors.

Abstract

Objective: Trauma exposure poses a risk for diagnoses beyond trauma and stressor-related disorders listed in current psychological taxonomies. Alternative models, such as the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology, posit that psychological phenomena are better organized in a hierarchical manner, with broader dimensions accounting for the covariation among lower order syndromes. Thus, the present study investigated the relationships between trauma exposure and internalizing syndromes through higher order psychological dimensions.

Method: Undergraduates (N = 585) at a large midwestern university completed questionnaires, which included the Life Events Checklist for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.), the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.), the Inventory for Depression and Anxiety Symptoms (2nd ed.), and the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire. Three structural equation models with stressors congruent and incongruent with Criterion A listed as predictors were used to examine the total, indirect, and direct effects for all internalizing indicators and first-order factors.

Results: After accounting for higher order dimensions, only insomnia and panic maintained a unique portion of variance explained by trauma variety. Trauma variety and interpersonal index traumas explained unique proportions of posttraumatic stress symptoms, but not distress or fear.

Conclusions: Findings support the utility of assessing stressors through shared mechanisms within a hierarchical framework and substantiate trauma-induced insomnia theories through a novel relationship between trauma variety and insomnia. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).