Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms Among Trauma-Exposed Inpatient Adolescents: The Role of Emotional Nonacceptance and Anxiety Symptom Severity

The present investigation examined the role of anxiety symptom severity in the relation between emotional nonacceptance and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms in a diverse sample of trauma-exposed adolescents admitted for acute psychiatric care at an inpatient state hospital (N = 50; 52.0% women; 44% white; mean [SD] age, 15.1 [0.51] years; range, 12-17 years). Anxiety symptom severity partially accounted for the association between emotional nonacceptance and PTSD total symptoms, and fully accounted for the association between emotional nonacceptance and PTSD symptom cluster severity, even after controlling for covariates. Reverse model testing provided confidence in the direction of hypothesized effects. These findings add to a body of literature underscoring the detrimental effect of nonaccepting reactions to negative emotions in the context of PTSD and provide preliminary support for a possible underlying role of anxiety symptom severity in the association between emotional nonacceptance and PTSD symptoms.