| The objective of the present study was to examine how trauma history, substance abuse, and religious coping style related to trauma symptoms among homeless men engaged in a residential substance abuse recovery program. There were 98 participants in the study; the mean age was 42.54 years and the sample was ethnically diverse. The instruments included a demographics questionnaire; the DAST-20 (Skinner, Gavin, & Ross, 1989); the AUDIT (Babor, Higgins-Biddle, Saunders, & Monterio, 2001); the Brief RCOPE (Pargament, Smith, Koenig, & Perez, 1998), which measures positive and negative religious coping; the Trauma History Screen (THS; Allen, Huntoon, & Evans, 1999); and the Trauma Symptom Inventory (TSI; Briere, 1995). The analyses included multiple regression and multivariate analysis of variance. Ninety-five percent of the sample reported having experienced at least one traumatic event in their lifetimes. Overall findings indicated high levels of drug and alcohol abuse in the sample. As predicted, measures of drug and alcohol abuse were significantly and positively correlated with the trauma symptom scales. Positive religious coping was frequently endorsed by participants, though there were no significant associations between positive religious coping and the trauma symptom scales. Significant correlations were obtained between negative religious coping and four of the TSI scales: Anxious Arousal, Intrusive Experience, Defensive Avoidance, and Dissociation. As expected, the THS was highly correlated with the TSI symptom scales; it also showed an encouraging level of internal consistency reliability (.78). African-American participants obtained significantly lower TSI scale scores than Caucasians on Anxious Arousal and Depression; their Depression score was also significantly lower than that of their Latino counterparts. Consequently, ethnicity was controlled for in the regression analyses. The regression analyses showed that drug abuse, as measured by the DAST-20, accounted for significant variance in several TSI scales (Anxious Arousal, Depression, Intrusive Experience, and Defensive Avoidance). Negative religious coping emerged as significantly associated with scores on the TSI Dissociation scale, which provided additional evidence of the problematic nature of this coping style. Other findings, clinical implications, limitations, and recommendations for future research are discussed. |
