da Silva et al. Psicologia: Reflexão e Crítica (2016) 29:34 DOI 10.1186/s41155-016-0015-y Psicologia: Reflexão e Crítica Event centrality in trauma and PTSD: relations between event relevance and posttraumatic symptoms Thiago Loreto Garcia da Silva*, Julia Candia Donat, Pânila Longhi Lorenzonni, Luciana Karine de Souza, Gustavo Gauer and Christian Haag Kristensen Background Most people will experience highly stressful events at some point in their lives. Epidemiological studies esti- mate that 40 to 90 % of the general population experi- ences or witnesses at least one traumatic event across the life span (Creamer et al. 2001; Kessler et al. 1995). In Brazil, a recent epidemiological study in two brazilian capital cities showed that 90 % of the population faced a trauma in life and approximately 11 % had Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). In this study all mental disor- ders were associated with the occurrence of traumatic events (Ribeiro et al., 2013...