Injury talk: spontaneous parent–child conversations in the aftermath of a potentially traumatic event

Abstract

BackgroundWhile talking about traumatic experiences is considered central to psychological recovery, little is known about how these conversations occur in daily life.ObjectiveWe investigated spontaneous injury talk among parents and children in the aftermath of a child’s hospitalisation due to physical trauma, and its relationship with children’s socioemotional functioning.MethodsIn a prospective naturalistic observation study, we audio-sampled the daily life of 71 families with the Electronically Activated Recorder after their child (3–16 years old) was discharged from hospital. We collected close to 20 000 snippets of audio information, which were double-coded for conversation characteristics, and measured children’s socioemotional functioning with the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) at 6 weeks and 3 months postinjury.FindingsThe children were involved in injury talk for, on average, 46 min/day, 9 min of which referred to emotions. Children had significantly more injury conversations with their mothers than with their fathers. The tone of injury conversations was significantly more positive than that of non-injury conversations. More direct injury talk was associated with fewer problems on the emotion subscale of the SDQ at 3 months. Other associations between aspects of injury talk and children’s socioemotional functioning were mostly non-significant, although they appeared to be stronger at 3 months than at 6 weeks.ConclusionsFamilies spontaneously talked about the injury and associated issues for about the same amount of time per day as a therapist might within a session (a ‘therapy hour’).Clinical implicationsMaking full use of naturally occurring injury talk may be a valuable direction for parent and family-focused postinjury interventions. However, the study design prevents causal inference, and further exploration is warranted.

Listening to Family Life After Serious Pediatric Injury: A Study of Four Cases

“…The Ear for Recovery study (see Alisic et al, 2015Alisic et al, , 2017, for recruitment details, procedure, participant demographics, and descriptions of measures for the full sample, N = 71 families) was approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of the Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne (study number 33103) and the Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee (file number CF13/2515-2013001322).…”

“…The iPod was enclosed within a belt worn by the child for a two-day period at home (with one exception where only one day of recording was available) as close to discharge as possible. The files were transcribed, and interactions were coded by two trained independent coders according to the child's conversation partner(s), current activity, the topic of conversation, and emotional tone (see Alisic et al, 2017, for more details on coding). Intraclass correlations (ICC [1,2]) for all reported variables exceeded 0.8, indicating adequate inter-coder agreement.…”

“…Certainly, taken together with the discrepant scores on the FACES-IV, the EAR data raise, rather than answer, questions. These findings raise the question of whether the recordings represented a reduction in father-daughter communication following the injury, potentially indicating avoidance, or whether Holly's father was an example of the www.FamilyProcess.org 1202 / FAMILY PROCESS broader finding of fathers interacting less with their children than mothers (Alisic et al, 2017;Mangelsdorf, Mehl, Qiu, & Alisic, 2019; see Table 2).…”

“…FAMILY PROCESS broader finding of fathers interacting less with their children than mothers (Alisic et al, 2017;Mangelsdorf, Mehl, Qiu, & Alisic, 2019; see Table 2).…”

“…The Ear for Recovery study (Alisic et al, 2015(Alisic et al, , 2017) used a naturalistic observational tool, the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR; Mehl, 2017), to explore home-based family interactions in the context of trauma (serious injury). In the past, EAR research has typically involved aggregating data across cases and using quantitative methods (Mehl et al, 2012).…”