The role of personality traits in trajectories of long-term posttraumatic stress and general distress six years after the tsunami in Southeast Asia

For both PTS and general distress, individuals with a resilient trajectory were lower in the trait neuroticism than those in the symptomatic trajectories whereas there were no differences in personality traits between the resilient trajectory and the low exposure comparison group. Neuroticism was strongly related to trajectories of both PTS and general distress even when adjusting for important risk factors such as traumatic bereavement and exposure severity. Other personality traits demonstrated weak associations with the trajectories. The present findings correspond with the notion of neuroticism as a vulnerability factor for symptomatic long-term trajectories of posttraumatic and general distress whereas resiliency was not predicated by particularly low levels of neuroticism.