Research Letter: Flooding, displacement, peritraumatic experience and disaster-related PTSD in northern New South Wales - The critical need for quality data to plan mental health support

Introduction
Northern NSW (NNSW) is a ‘hotspot’ for disasters, particularly floods. Floods can have powerful impacts on mental health, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Previous disaster research has found that peritraumatic experience – ‘ . . . the emotional and physiological distress experienced during and/or immediately after a traumatic event’ (Bunnell et al., 2018) – is highly associated with subsequent development of PTSD. In this Research Letter, we present updated findings from a NNSW study in 2017 of the link between peritraumatic experience and PTSD (not previously included in papers published from this study). These data are particularly pertinent as in 2022 there was more extreme flooding in NNSW with numerous reports of peritraumatic experience, which would suggest there is likely to be a huge unmet need for effective PTSD treatment in the coming years.