Background Almost 80% of adolescents in the US have experienced a traumatic event, and approximately 7% have post-traumatic stress disorder. However, there is a lack of validated and feasible assessments for assessing traumatic stress symptoms in pediatric primary care, and traumatic stress symptoms are routinely unidentified. This study aimed to develop, pilot test, and assess the psychometric properties of the Adolescent Primary Care Traumatic Stress Screen (APCTSS), a five-item yes/no screener for post-traumatic stress symptoms in adolescents designed for use in pediatric primary care. Methods The APCTSS was developed by pediatricians, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers who all provide care to trauma-affected adolescent patients. The providers sought to create a developmentally appropriate tool that accurately reflected DSM-5 posttraumatic stress symptoms and that was feasible and acceptable for use in pediatric primary care. To develop the APCTSS, they combined and adapted the UCLA Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Reaction Index for DSM-5 with the adult Primary Care PTSD Screen for DSM-5. Next, 213 adolescent medicine patients were universally approached during routine clinic visits and 178 agreed to participate and were enrolled. The 178 patients were aged 13-22 (M=18.4, SD=2.3), 64.4% female; 62.1% Black or African-American, and 20.7% Hispanic/Latinx. Patients completed APCTSS, Patient Health Questionnaire for Adolescents (PHQ-A), and the Child PTSD Symptom Scale for DSM-5 Interview (CPSS-5-I), and 61 completed the Traumatic Events Screening Inventory for Children (TESI-C). Results 56.7% reported a criterion A trauma, 30.1% met criteria for DSM-5 PTSD, 7.4% met criteria for subsyndromal PTSD symptoms, and 19.0% for post-event impairing symptoms. Validity and reliability testing indicated that the APCTSS was internally consistent, had good concurrent and discriminant validity, and demonstrated good sensitivity and specificity in identifying adolescents at high risk for post-trauma symptoms. Over half of patients (56.0%) who screened positive on the APCTSS (score ≥2) would not have been identified as having a mental health concern using the PHQ-A, including 60.8% of patients who had probable PTSD, subsyndromal PTSD, or post-event impairing symptoms. Conclusions Many youth with trauma-related mental health symptoms are unidentified in pediatric primary care, which is a missed opportunity for early identification and may contribute to a host of poor outcomes. The development of an effective and feasible traumatic stress screening tool for youth primary care may improve early intervention, and the health and well-being of trauma affected youth.

Objective: Our study aims to adapt an evidence-based, brief intervention for use in an urban safety-net adolescent primary care center with an existing integrated behavioral health team who have not previously treated post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) explicitly in the clinic.Background: PTSD is routinely undertreated in adolescent primary care due in part to a lack of evidence-based interventions for PTSD that can be feasibly delivered in primary care. Sustainable PTSD interventions in adolescent medicine clinics must overcome patient, provider, and system-level barriers. Methods:The Brief Relaxation, Education And Trauma Healing (BREATHE) was selected for adaptation based on a literature review of evidence-based target interventions. Purposeful sampling was used to recruit nine adolescent patients, two parents, and eight clinic staff (N=19) for individual qualitative interviews focused on feasibility of implementation of a PTSD intervention delivered in an adolescent medicine primary care clinic that serves diverse patients with high trauma exposure. Audio recordings from these interviews were transcribed and analyzed using inductive and directed a priori approaches related to the central research questions.Results: Participants provided feedback on the format and content of the BREATHE intervention to adapt the existing treatment to be feasible and sustainable in a primary care setting. Overall, participants thought the intervention was helpful and feasible and provided specific feedback for adaptation. Conclusion:This study developed the Primary Care Intervention for PTSD (PCIP) as a resource for improving PTSD care for adolescents in a primary care setting. Further studies will evaluate PCIP efficacy on PTSD symptomology.

ObjectivesTo develop and assess the psychometric properties of the Adolescent Primary Care Traumatic Stress Screen (APCTSS), a five-item yes/no screener for PTSD symptoms in adolescents, and the first developed for pediatric primary care.Study DesignThe APCTSS was developed by combining and adapting the UCLA PTSD Reaction Index for DSM-5 with the adult Primary Care PTSD Screen for DSM-5. Adolescent medicine patients were universally approached during clinic visits. With a response rate of 83.6%, 178 patients aged 13-22 (M=18.4, SD=2.3), 64.4% female; 62.1% Black or African-American and 20.7% Hispanic/Latinx, were enrolled. Patients completed APCTSS, Patient Health Questionnaire for Adolescents (PHQ-A), and Child PTSD Symptom Scale for DSM-5 Interview (CPSS-5-I), and 61 completed the Traumatic Events Screening Inventory for Children (TESI-C).Results56.7% reported a criterion A trauma, 30.1% met criteria for PTSD, 7.4% met criteria for subsyndromal PTSD, and 19.0% for post-event impairing symptoms. Scores ≥ 2 on the APCTSS optimized sensitivity (.79; 95% CI=.66 to .89) and specificity (.68; 95% CI=.55 to .76) for PTSD, with an area under the curve (AUC) of .79. Sensitivity (.86; 95% CI=.65 to .90), specificity (.77; 95% CI=.60 to .90), and AUC (.86) were even stronger when the TESI-C was used to assess criterion A for PTSD diagnosis. Over half (56.0%) of patients who screened positive on the APCTSS were missed by the PHQ-A.ConclusionsThe APCTSS shows promise as an internally consistent, valid, and effective tool for identifying adolescents at high risk of PTSD and traumatic stress.

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