Unseen burden: A gender-based study of trauma reactions in university students in Pakistan

Background: A survey on trauma reactions was carried out among 830 university students from private and government sector universities. Aim: The indigenous Trauma Reactions Scale developed by Rani and Saleem (2025) was used to collect data. 45 items were designed to determine the prevalence of mental health issues associated with traumatic life events in university students. Method: This scale consists of four subscales emotion dysregulation, social withdrawal, depersonalization, and intolerance. For demonstration of overall results, the authors suggest that scores falling above one SD should be considered as indicative of severe problems, whereas scores about 2 SD represent very severe problems. Results: The findings revealed that most men were experiencing a moderate (20 %) level of trauma reactions, followed by severe (14 %), mild (9 %), and very severe (6 %). Furthermore, the women fall into the following categories 7 % mild, 15 % moderate, 19 % severe, and 9 % very severe. The results revealed that men fell into a mild to moderate, and women fell into the severe to very severe psychosocial stress reaction to trauma. Ordinal logistic regression reveals that the gender is statistically significant predictor of trauma reaction, but the symptoms of trauma reactions are almost similar in across gender. Conclusion: These findings are consistent with other similar studies on the mental health of university students. The role of variables such as sample characteristics, the measure used, and cultural and contextual factors is discussed in determining rates, as well as their implications for student counseling services in prevention and intervention.