Journal
COMPUTERS IN HUMAN BEHAVIOR
Volume 72, Issue -, Pages 170-177Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2017.02.051
Keywords
DSM-5; PTSD; Problematic smartphone use; Latent-level relations; MTurk
Funding
- Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Academic Affiliations Advanced Fellowship Program in Mental Illness Research and Treatment
- Central Texas Veterans Health Care System
- VISN 17 Center of Excellence for Research on Returning War Veterans
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Common mental health consequences following the experience of potentially traumatic events include Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and addictive behaviors. Problematic smartphone use is a newer manifestation of addictive behaviors. People with anxiety severity (such as PTSD) may be at risk for problematic smartphone use as a means of coping with their symptoms. Unique to our knowledge, we assessed relations between PTSD symptom clusters and problematic smartphone use. Participants (N = 347), recruited through Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk), completed measures of PTSD and smartphone addiction. Results of the Wald tests of parameter constraints indicated that problematic smartphone use was more related to PTSD's negative alterations in cognitions and mood (NACM) than to PTSD's avoidance factor, Wald X-2(1, N = 347) = 12.51, p = 0.0004; and more to PTSD's arousal compared to PTSD's avoidance factor, Wald X-2(1, N = 347) = 14.89, p = 0.0001. Results indicate that problematic smartphone use is most associated with negative affect and arousal among trauma-exposed individuals. Implications include the need to clinically assess problematic smartphone use among trauma-exposed individuals presenting with higher NACM and arousal severity; and targeting NACM and arousal symptoms to mitigate the effects of problematic smartphone use. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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