Post-traumatic stress disorder and its associated factors among war-affected residents in Woldia town, North East Ethiopia, 2022; community based cross-sectional study

Introduction Post-traumatic stress disorder is marked by increased stress and anxiety following exposure to a traumatic or stressful event. Events of conflict and war-related traumas were commonly reported situations and people who have undergone through have a higher tendency to develop PTSD Woldia town had been under a serious military surge and a five-month encroachment, so the expected destruction in property, impact on physical, social and mental health of civilians was potentially high. More importantly, there is no study that investigated the significance of association between war-related traumatic events and post-traumatic stress disorder in the area. so this study aims to assess prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder and its associated factors among war-affected residents in Woldia town, North East Ethiopia, 2022. Method A community-based cross-sectional study design was employed by using a multi-stage systematic random sampling technique from May-15 to June-15/2022. A total of 609 participants were enrolled. PTSD was measured by the post-traumatic stress disorder checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5). Data were entered by Epi data version 4.6.0.2 and analyzed using STATA version 14. Bivariable and Multivariable logistic regression analysis was done to identify associated factors to PTSD and P-values less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant. Results The overall prevalence of PTSD was 56.28%. Destruction/looting of property (AOR = 1.6,95%CI,1.11–2.47), murder/injury of family member (AOR = 2.1,95% CI,1.37–3.22), witness of murder of family member/others (AOR = 1.6,95% CI,1.01–2.71), unlawful imprisonment (AOR = 1.7, 95%CI, 1.06–2.74), depression (AOR = 2, 95%CI, 1.37–2.93), anxiety (AOR = 3.3, 95%CI,2.26–4.97), experience trauma on themselves (AOR = 2.0,95%CI,1.22–3.58), poor (AOR = 3.1,95%CI,1.60–6.04) and moderate (AOR = 3.0, 95%CI, 1.56–5.87) social support were statistically associated with PTSD at a p-value < 0.05. Conclusion The study reveals that the prevalence of PTSD was high in Woldia town following an armed conflict between Federal Government and Tigray forces. Destruction/looting of property, murder/injury of family, witness murder of family/others, unlawful imprisonment, depression, anxiety, experience on themselves, poor and moderate social support were statistically associated with PTSD. Hence, encourage organization working on mental health, routine patient assessment with a history of trauma, facilitating means to support affected residents is recommended.