Child and parent response to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing

Abstract

This study evaluated children's symptoms 3 and 9 months after the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and the relationship between parent and child reactions when only the children had been in the building. Nine children who had been trapped in an elevator, 13 who had been on the observation deck, and 27 controls completed the Posttraumatic Stress Reaction Index and a Fear Inventory. Parents completed these measures about the children and comparable measures about themselves. Exposed children reported posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and disaster-related fears; their parents reported experiencing PTSD symptoms. Only parents rated children's symptoms as decreasing significantly over time. Association between child symptoms and parent symptoms increased over time. Children's initial distress predicted parents' distress 9 months postdisaster.

Acute stress disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder in parents of injured children

“…Studies have employed a wide range of follow-up time points, and PTSD rates have ranged from 4% to 40%. Parent PTSD symptoms have been documented after disasters or terrorist attacks (Jones, Ribbe, Cunningham, & Weddle, 2002;Koplewicz, 2002;Stuber et al, 2002), but the most prolific literature in this area concerns parents' traumatic stress in association with pediatric medical events, including cancer (Kazak et al, 1998;Manne, Du Hamel, Gallelli, Sorgen, & Redd, 1998), burns (Hall et al, 2006), injury (B. Bryant et al, 2004;DeVries et al, 1999), intensive care admission (Balluffi et al, 2004;Bronner, Knoester, Bos, Last, & Grootenhuis, 2008), organ transplantation (Young et al, 2003), asthma (Kean, Kelsay, Wamboldt, & Wamboldt, 2006), and diabetes (Landolt, Vollrath, Laimbacher, Gnehm, & Sennhauser, 2005).…”

School‐based intervention for prevention and treatment of elementary‐students' terror‐related distress in Israel: A quasi‐randomized controlled trial

“…fears, affect-control dysregularities, sleep disturbances, somatic complaints, regressive behaviors, learning difficulties and substance abuse. (Baker & Shaloub-Kerkovian, 1999;Kinzie, Sack, Angell, Masson, & Rath, 1986;Koplewicz et al, 2002;Laor et al, 1997;Pat-Horencyk et al, 2007;Trappler & Friedman, 1996).…”

Gene-environment interaction in posttraumatic stress disorder

“…Attempts to resolve this apparent discrepancy have highlighted the importance of time lapsed between traumatic exposure and assessment [106]. Studies examining acute distress levels soon after the trauma typically find no association between parent and child PTSS [16,137], while longitudinal studies show increases in parent-child PTSS associations over time [79,103,124]. Initial symptoms in the child have been found to impact subsequent symptoms in the parent [79] and initial parent symptoms have been found to predict subsequent child symptoms [31,93,100].…”