A recent study underscores the critical role that traumatic life events (TLEs) play in posttraumatic stress, borderline personality, and attenuated psychotic symptom expression. Furthermore, the relationship between TLEs and depression, cannabis and other drug use, generalized anxiety, and social anxiety disappeared after adjusting for comorbid symptoms. Researchers explored the association between TLEs and 8 psychological constructs before and after adjusting for concurrent symptomatology in a diverse sample of 2,342 undergraduates. They predicted 3 symptom domains would withstand conservative adjustments in their relationship to TLEs: posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), borderline personality disorder (BPD), and attenuated positive psychotic symptoms (APPS). They found:

• Exposure to at least 1 TLE, but especially ≥4 TLEs, was significantly associated with PTSD and BPD symptoms even after controlling for concurrent symptoms.
• Additionally, the association between ≥4 TLEs and APPS persisted despite adjusting for covariates.