A Critical Review of Effective Child Mass Trauma Interventions: What We Know and Do Not Know from the Evidence

Abstract

Over the last 20 years, numerous interventions have been developed and evaluated for use with children exposed to mass trauma with six publications reporting meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials of child mass trauma interventions using inactive controls to examine intervention effects on posttraumatic stress, depression, anxiety, and functional impairment. The current report reviews the results of these meta-analytic studies to examine the status of the evidence for child mass trauma mental health interventions and to evaluate potential moderators of intervention effect and implications for practice. The meta-analyses reviewed for the current report revealed a small to medium overall effect of interventions on posttraumatic stress, a non-statistically significant to small overall effect on depression, a non-statistically significant overall effect on anxiety, and a small overall effect on functional impairment. The subgroup analyses suggest that interventions should be matched to the populations being served and to the context. Additional research is needed to tailor future interventions to further address outcomes other than posttraumatic stress including depression, anxiety, and functional impairment.

Disasters, Diagnosis, and Distress: Multiple Perspectives, Populations, and Methodologies

“…A review article by Pfefferbaum et al [7] in this Special Issue synthesized the results of 12 meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials of outcomes (PTSD, depression, anxiety, and functional impairment) of interventions for mass trauma in children. The mass trauma events studied included a broad array of incidents, including natural disasters, humanmade disasters (technological accidents, mass violence, and armed conflict), and traumatic events in humanitarian settings in low-and middle-income countries as well as incidents in high-income settings.…”

Psychological impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) social distancing mandates on trauma survivors

“…childhood or adulthood). 16 , 17 , 18 The psychological impact of past trauma has been found to augment an individuals’ response to additional traumas, 2 , 19 including medical threats such as COVID-19. 20 , 21 …”

The impact of COVID-19 and bushfires on the mental health of Australian adolescents: a cross-sectional study

“…Adolescents tend to be more severely affected by disasters than adults [15,16], and younger age is a pre-disaster risk factor for post-disaster mental illness [17]. Many factors can influence how adolescents respond to disasters, including characteristics of the disaster (e.g., severity) and the type/degree of exposure to it, individual characteristics, family factors, and the social environment [6,9]. Some characteristics of COVID-19 and the bushfires experienced by young people are qualitatively different.…”