Author(s)

Ibrahim A. Kira, Thomas Templin, Linda Lewandowski, Jeffery S. Ashby, Alwande Oladele, Lydia Odenat

Center for Cumulative Trauma Studies, Stone Mountain, USA.
DeKalb County Board of Health, Decatur, USA.
Emory University, Atlanta, USA.
Georgia State University, Atlanta, USA.
Wayne State University, Detroit, USA.

Measures that screen for mental health in multiple traumatized populations (e.g., refugees, minorities, mental health patients, prison inmates) lack theoretical clarity that makes it difficult to develop a measure that has robust psychometrics. The paper proposes cumulative trauma disorders (CTD) model and develops a scale that measures the concept and can be used as a general mental health screening tool in such populations. The measure has been tested on two studies: on representative community sample of Iraqi refugees in Michigan and on a clinic sample of refugees. Further, the measure was used on samples of Iraqi refugee and African American adolescents, West Bank and Gaza in Palestinian territories, as well as a mental health screening tool in some centers that screen refugees and torture survivors in US. The measure has been found to have high alpha and test-retest reliability, good construct, concurrent, discriminative and predictive validity in the two main samples and on all the studies and centers that utilized it. The measure can be used as a general mental health screening tool for adult and adolescent in public health settings in different cultures, as well as for refugees, torture survivors, and highly traumatized populations.

Complex PTSD; DESNOS; Cumulative Trauma Disorders (CTD); Torture Survivors;Refugees; Minorities

Kira, I. , Templin, T. , Lewandowski, L. , Ashby, J. , Oladele, A. and Odenat, L. (2012) Cumulative Trauma Disorder Scale (CTD): Two Studies. Psychology, 3, 643-656. doi: 10.4236/psych.2012.39099.