NATAL is proud to announce that a new study by its research team and the University of Haifa was published in Psychological Medicine, a peer-reviewed journal. This paper was led by Dr. Talya Greene of the University of Haifa and co-authored by Prof. Marc Gelkopf, head of NATAL’s research department, as well as Sacha Epskamp and Eiko Fried of the University of Amsterdam.
The study was conducted during Operation Protective Edge (2014) in Israeli civilians. Participants reported their stress symptoms level twice a day for 30 days.
The study found that the symptom that most predicted other symptoms 12 hours later was startle response – being easily startled by noises such as car backfire etc. People who experienced startle response during the war were more likely to experience other symptoms such as sleep difficulties and negative emotions within 12 hours.
See the full paper here:
Greene, T., Gelkopf, M., Epskamp, S., & Fried, E. (2018). Dynamic networks of PTSD symptoms during conflict. Psychological Medicine, 1-9. doi:10.1017/S0033291718000351
