[The burn patient: factors associated with post-traumatic stress disorder and directions for intervention]

Abstract

Aim: Starting from the evidence that not all burn patients develop a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the aim of this overview was to describe variables, which favour the development of the disorder following to burn injury and to delineate directions for a treatment.

Methods: We searched articles in English related to PTSD in the population suffering from burns in the PubMed database, using the key word 'burn' in combination with: PTSD, traumatic event, trauma, ASD, and psychological factors. We concentrated our attention on articles published in the last decade (January 1998-March 2010).

Results: We found 32 articles. The risk factors concurring in the onset of PTSD are the presence of post-traumatic symptoms in the first following weeks to the burn, the avoidant coping, neuroticism, the presence of psychiatric disorder before the trauma, and the degree of disfigurement. The principal protective factors emerged from the review are the search of social or emotional support and extraversion. Information related to the treatment of these patients is scarce.

Conclusions: The literature underlines the importance of the individual vulnerability to the development of PTSD in burn patients, besides the experience itself of a traumatic event. These patients face particular and specific problems, therefore, with the purpose to develop a suitable intervention, it would be useful to appraise, besides the physical and psychosocial implications of the burn, the psychological characteristics of each patient, to articulate a treatment that may account for the complexity of the burn patient.