Network analysis of trauma-related mental health comorbidities under continuous traumatic stress: a comparative study of South African and Ukrainian adolescents

Background

Adolescents living under conditions of continuous traumatic stress (CTS) are exposed to ongoing, persistent, unpredictable threats that differ from past discrete traumatic events and are associated with high levels of CTS symptoms, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and anxiety. Despite growing evidence that CTS functions as a risk factor for trauma-related disorders, little is known about how specific CTS symptoms are embedded within broader psychopathology networks across diverse contexts of chronic violence.