For some Americans, the COVID-19 pandemic has emerged as a source of traumatic stress that may predict post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, according to a new study.

Research shows that the association between COVID traumatic stress and PTSD is stronger among people who have repeated experiences of past trauma. The findings were true across racial groups, with the exception of Asian Americans.

“While many people are insulated from deaths and economic hardships related to the pandemic, there is a universal experience of fear, concern for others, and social isolation,” says lead author Jeff Ashby, professor of counseling and psychological services in the College of Education & Human Development at Georgia State University and co-director of the Center for Stress, Trauma and Resilience.

“Among our findings is that the experience of COVID-19 is a traumatic stress. It isn’t just triggering earlier trauma, it’s a traumatic experience in and of itself.”

For the study in the Journal of Community Psychology, researchers surveyed 745 people to examine the potential interaction of race/ethnicity, COVID-19 traumatic stress, and cumulative trauma in the prediction of PTSD symptoms. They used a recently validated COVID-19 Traumatic Stress Scale to measure the pandemic’s effect as related to the threat or fear of infection and death.

Generally, the research revealed a positive and significant association between COVID traumatic stress and PTSD symptoms, suggesting that the pandemic is a unique traumatic stressor. Among all racial groups except Asian Americans, there was also an association between increased PTSD symptoms and high levels of cumulative trauma.

“We found a three-way interaction between COVID traumatic stress, cumulative trauma, and race in predicting PTSD,” says Ashby. “That means there is a relationship between cumulative trauma and PTSD, and there is a relationship between COVID traumatic stress and PTSD. And except for Asian Americans, those of us who have more cumulative trauma are more likely to experience COVID-19 as a traumatic stressor.”

For Asian Americans who experienced COVID traumatic stress, higher levels of cumulative trauma did not appear to worsen PTSD symptoms. Instead, the relationship between COVID, traumatic stress, and PTSD symptoms did not appear to be affected by previous trauma for this group.

Read the full article about COVID-19 and PTSD by Jennifer Rainey Marquez at Futurity.