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Half a Century of Research on Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Scientometric Analysis
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Half a Century of Research on Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Scientometric Analysis

Michel Sabé, Chaomei Chen, Wissam El-Hage, Stefan Kaiser, Arnaud Leroy, Guillaume Vaiva, Silvia Monari, Natacha Premand, Javier Bartolomei, Stefano Caiolo, …
Current neuropharmacology, v 22
28 Sep 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2174/1570159X22666230927143106
url
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10845098View
Published, Version of Record (VoR)Open Access (License Unspecified),  Open

Abstract

We conducted a scientometric analysis to outline clinical research on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Our primary objective was to perform a broad-ranging scientometric analysis to evaluate key themes and trends over the past decades. Our secondary objective was to measure re- search network performance. We conducted a systematic search in the Web of Science Core Collec- tion up to 15 August 2022 for publications on PTSD. We identified 42,170 publications published be- tween 1945 and 2022. We used CiteSpace to retrieve the co-cited reference network (1978-2022) that presented significant modularity and mean silhouette scores, indicating highly credible clusters (Q = 0.915, S = 0.795). Four major trends of research were identified: ‘war veterans and refugees’, ‘treat- ment of PTSD/neuroimaging’, ‘evidence syntheses’, and ‘somatic symptoms of PTSD’. The largest cluster of research concerned evidence synthesis for genetic predisposition and environmental expo- sures leading to PTSD occurrence. Research on war-related trauma has shifted from battlefield-related in-person exposure trauma to drone operator trauma and is being out published by civilian-related trauma research, such as the ‘COVID-19’ pandemic impact, ‘postpartum’, and ‘grief disorder’. The focus on the most recent trends in the research revealed a burst in the ‘treatment of PTSD’ with the development of Mhealth, virtual reality, and psychedelic drugs. The collaboration networks reveal a central place for the USA research network, and although relatively isolated, a recent surge of publica- tions from China was found. Compared to other psychiatric disorders, we found a lack of high-quality randomized controlled trials for pharmacological and nonpharmacological treatments. These results can inform funding agencies and future research.

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