Heart rate variability and the relationship between trauma exposure age, and psychopathology in a post-conflict setting

Table 2 Key demographic, symptom severity scores, comorbidity rates and heart rate variables presented on the left side of the table for case and noncase groups

		Cases		Noncases			Correlations
		Mean	SD	Mean	SD	t	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
1	Age (years)	41.56	13.4	37.21	13.22	1.37	–
2	PTE exposure (count)	5.44	2.37	4.21	2.40	2.18*	0.24	–
3	K10 score (sum)	28.98	7.97	22.69	7.50	3.39**	0.27	0.23	–
4	HTQ score (mean)	2.12	0.51	1.38	0.33	6.97**	0.15	0.38***	0.71***	–
5	Aggressive behaviour index (score)	10.47	3.12	5.48	2.75	7.02**	−0.10	0.17	0.16	.50***	–
6	HR (bpm)	75.18	12.68	77.84	11.47	−0.83	−0.15	–0.31***	−0.02	−0.07	–0.11	–
7	RMSSD (ms; log)	1.46	0.26	1.58	0.22	−2.02*	−0.45***	−0.01	−0.23	−0.19	−0.04	−0.60***	–

PTE potentially traumatic event, K10 10 item measure of psychological distress symptoms with scores 25–29 indicating high levels of distress and scores > 30 extreme levels of distress, HTQ Harvard Trauma Questionnaire indexing PTSD symptoms, HR heart rate, RMSSD root of the mean square of successive differences HRV measure. Right side of table presents inter-correlations (case and non-case groups combined) between variables (R-values presented). For both independent samples t-test and bivariate correlations: * p < .05; **p<. 01; ***p<. 007 (Bonferroni-corrected for correlation analyses)

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