Posttraumatic stress disorder and racism-based traumatic stress: Not one and the same.

OBJECTIVE: It remains unclear the extent to which symptoms of racism-based traumatic stress (RBTS) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) reflect distinguishable experiential profiles or are better characterized by a general traumatic stress construct. The present study sought to address this gap by utilizing bifactor modeling to disambiguate shared and unique variance between RBTS and PTSD. METHOD: , Fifth Edition-Self-Report and the Youth Racism-Based Traumatic Stress Symptom Scale. RESULTS: Findings indicate little evidence of a reliable and valid global factor comprising general and racism-specific traumatic stress symptoms. Rather, PTSD and RBTS emerged as moderately correlated but distinguishable constructs that demonstrate independent and discriminant validity with racism-related measures. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that RBTS and PTSD are not reducible to a single traumatic stress construct among ethnoracially minoritized youth. Results underscore the importance of assessing RBTS with measures designed to specifically capture traumatic stress responses to racism. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).