Posttraumatic stress reactions as a disruption in anxiety-buffer functioning: Dissociation and responses to mortality salience as predictors of severity of posttraumatic symptoms

Anxiety-Buffer Disruption Theory (ABDT) posits that posttraumatic stress disorder is associated with a disruption of normal anxiety-buffer functioning produced by traumatic events that produce high levels of dissociation. Two experiments conducted among survivors of the 2005 Zarand earthquake in Iran supported four hypotheses derived from ABDT: (1) dissociation predicts atypical responses to death- and trauma-related thoughts, (2) dissociation predicts stronger affective responses to death- and trauma-related thoughts, (3) PTSD symptom severity 2 years after the event is associated with continued disruption of anxiety-buffer responses, (4) the relationship between dissociation 1 month posttrauma and posttraumatic symptoms 2 years later is mediated by disrupted anxiety-buffering functioning. The role of anxiety-buffer disruption in both clinically significant and seemingly benign but socially problematic responses to traumatic events was discussed.