The experience of trauma is prevalent among young adult college students and is often associated with poor mental health outcomes such as symptoms of anxiety. Not all individuals who have experienced trauma, however, develop anxiety, perhaps due to individual-level adaptive characteristics, such as use of adaptive rather than maladaptive coping strategies. Yet, little research has examined the interrelationships between the experience of trauma, specific types of coping strategies, and subclinical anxiety symptoms. A sample of 915 undergraduate students completed self-report measures of trauma, coping strategies, and anxiety symptoms. We hypothesized that traumatic life events would be associated with anxiety symptoms, and that this relation would be moderated by adaptive and maladaptive coping, such that adaptive coping will weaken, whereas maladaptive coping will exacerbate, the trauma-anxiety relationship. Results demonstrated maladaptive coping, but not adaptive coping, was a moderator of the association between the experience of trauma and symptoms of anxiety.

There has been an abundance of studies that have adopted positivist approaches, employing quantitative methods, to research OCD 'symptoms' and their underlying neurobiology and neurochemistry. There appears to be a lack of research investigating how OCD is experienced by those living with the diagnosis, and in particular the experiences of young people diagnosed with OCD. Ten young people, aged 14-17 years old, with a diagnosis of OCD were recruited from Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). The young people were interviewed and a Thematic Analysis (TA) was used to analyse data. Four themes were developed through the analysis. The first theme 'Traumatic and stressful life events' found that 9 out of the 10 participants experienced at least one of the following three life events just prior to the development of their OCD: 'Hostility in the family', 'Illness and death', 'Bullying and friendlessness'. Four subthemes, 'Lack of understanding of the behaviour', 'Being secretive', 'I thought I was going crazy', and 'Feeling different', provided a richer understanding to the theme 'Responses to signs of OCD'. The four subthemes 'Feeling "right"', 'I was taking on all the responsibility', 'It's ruined everything', 'Everyday life is now in my bedroom' explored the third theme 'The battle of living with OCD'. The last theme 'Ambivalent relationship to help' described the conflict that most participants had over exposure therapy and accommodation of their OCD. Lastly, most participants felt the long waiting time for help was frustrating. The theme is fully explored by the following three subthemes: 'Conflicts of exposure therapy', 'Conflicts about accommodation of the OCD', and 'Frustrations of long waiting lists'. The themes that emerged may provide important information for clinicians and the implications of the research findings are discussed. The strengths and limitations of the study are noted and there are suggestions for future research.

Despite a high proportion of the population experiencing traumatic events within their lifetime, the number of individuals who go on to develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is comparatively small; herein highlighting the importance of individual differences in imparting risk and resilience towards the development and maintenance of PTSD. Existing literature illustrates that biological and ecological factors are important in predicting PTSD development, with pathological vulnerabilities excepting their effects at pre- peri- and post trauma stages. Whilst cognitive and emotion based models of PTSD account for the role of a minority of known pre-trauma risk factors, individual differences in peri- and post trauma processes are held as critical to the development of PTSD. The broad range of risk factors implicated in the empirical literature, and necessity of traumatic exposure to PTSD, implicates the utility of a diathesis-stress conceptualisation of PTSD development. The current thesis employed an analogue VR-trauma paradigm to investigate the respective importance of vulnerability factors at each stage, in the prediction of analogue PTSD symptoms (memory problems, startle responses, re-exposure fear habituation), whilst measuring affective and electrophysiological concomitance. Findings supported the importance of peri-traumatic responses in the prediction of PTSD, where present, showing increased predictive capacities over pre- and post-trauma factors. Biological and ecological factors also illustrated important predictive associations, with genetic SNPs implicated in reflex startle and cardiac responses towards intrusive memories. Moreover, peri-traumatic HR decelerations and accelerations mediated the association between pre-trauma factors and cued recall inaccuracy and intrusion severity respectively. Results support existing cognitive and emotional models in their emphasis on peri-traumatic processes but suggest the added utility of a diathesis stress conceptualisation of the development of PTSD, in highlighting the importance of pre-trauma biological and ecological risk and resilience factors.