Sources of Stress Associated with PTS

For some time, researchers and educators have been concerned with finding better ways to teach students who have experienced trauma in their lives. One problem with some of the common approaches may have been that they were not based on the experiences of actual students in a classroom environment. In this study, students were consulted to create a list of potential sources of stress that may exist in a college classroom. Afterwards, more students were surveyed concerning these sources of stress and trauma-related symptoms. Of the sources surveyed, post-traumatic stress symptoms were mostly aligned with the stress of classroom discussions and unlikely classroom threats (such as security concerns, loud noises, or a privacy breach). Classroom discussions were rated as the most stressful source (regardless of trauma symptoms), followed by classroom content (e.g. videos, textbooks, lectures), and unlikely classroom threats. However, students with higher post-traumatic stress symptoms rated classroom discussions as more stressful, but both unlikely threats and classroom content were the same. Implications for the future of trauma-informed environments are discussed.