Prior trauma and psychiatric history as risk factors for intentional and unintentional injury in Australia

Abstract

Background: Preliminary evidence suggests that injury survivors are at increased risk for having experienced traumatic events before their injury or having a lifetime psychiatric history. We aimed to extend the previous research by examining in the same sample whether trauma history or lifetime psychiatric history represented risk pathways to injury for intentional or unintentional injury survivors. We also aimed to describe the co-occurrence between trauma history and psychiatric history in unintentionally injured survivors.

Methods: In this multisited study, randomly selected injury survivors admitted to five trauma services in three states of Australia (April 2004 to February 2006) completed two structured clinical interviews that assessed their history of traumatic life events and lifetime psychiatric disorder (n = 1,167). chi analyses were conducted to compare the lifetime prevalence of traumatic events and psychiatric history for intentional and unintentional injury with population norms.

Results: Both intentional and unintentional injury survivors were at increased risk for reporting all types of trauma and reporting all measured psychiatric diagnoses compared with population norms. The majority of unintentional injury survivors with a psychiatric history were likely to have a trauma history.

Conclusions: In this study, we identified that prior trauma or prior psychiatric illness may represent risk for injury in both intentionally and unintentionally injured survivors. The results highlight the need for injury-care services to address mental health issues in injury patients as part of routine care.