Impact of war trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder on psychopathology in Croatian and German patients with severe mental illness

To explore posttraumatic stress symptoms and current psychopathology in a binational sample of Croatian and German participants with severe mental illness. We studied 178 inpatients from the Greifswald University (German patients, n=89) and University Hospital Zagreb and Ivan Barbot Neuropsychiatric Hospital (Croatian patients, n=89) with either major depression (n=150), schizophrenia (n=26), or bipolar disorder (n=2). Measurements included Posttraumatic Diagnostic Scale and the Symptom Check List-90-R. Participants were matched according to age, sex, and diagnosis. Croatians reported significantly more war traumatic events (64/82 vs 5/74, chi(2)(1)=77.142, P