Predictors of Trauma Exposure and Trauma Diagnoses for Children with Autism and Developmental Disorders Served in a Community Mental Health Clinic

Abstract

Exposure to potentially traumatic events (PTEs), and trauma related diagnoses are poorly understood in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and developmental disabilities (DD). The current study examined N = 7695 cases seen by a community mental health provider to compare exposure to PTEs and trauma-related diagnoses between children with ASD, children with DD, and children with other mental health diagnoses (e.g., depression). Predictors included demographics, exposure to negative life events, living situations, and subscales of the strengths and difficulties questionnaire (SDQ). Logistic regressions showed that diagnostic group, number and type of negative life events and locations lived, and SDQ subscale scores predicted trauma reports and trauma diagnoses. The findings suggest screener questions that may be useful across diagnostic groups.

‘Say hi to the lady on the television’: A review of clinic presentations and comparison of telepsychiatry and in‐person mental health assessments for people with intellectual disability in rural New South Wales

“…While complex trauma is not within the DSM, this diagnosis was used in our study as the diagnostic criteria for PTSD is difficult to meet in people with ID due to difficulties expressing the experience of nightmares or flashbacks. Nonetheless, the prevalence and contribution of trauma to the presentations of clients cannot be ignored and is often unappreciated within the population of people with ID (Hoch & Youssef, 2020; McNally et al, 2021; Sullivan & Knutson, 2000; Wigham & Emerson, 2015). Trauma in the clinic population was multi‐layered and multi‐factorial, including early separation or insecure attachment with caregivers, abuse, neglect, witnessing of violence and institutional abuse.…”

Utility of Diagnostic Classification for Children 0–5 to Assess Features of Autism: Comparing In-person and COVID-19 Telehealth Evaluations

“…Data extraction and cleaning was performed using the opensource R statistical software (R core team, 2021) and the data.table (Dowle & Arun Srinivasan, 2021), tidyverse (Wickham et al, 2019) packages using the methods previously described in Hoch and Youssef, (2020). The first author extracted ASRS scores from text fields in the medical records and transcribed them into tabular data for analysis.…”

Population-Based Psychiatric Comorbidity in Children and Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Meta-Analysis

“…Reviewed studies included also prevalence rates for some additional comorbidity such as suicide, bullying, trauma, tic disorder, gender identity disorder and enuresis/encopresis (14,15,30,35,(44)(45)(46)(47)(48)(49)(50)(51). These comorbidities were not included in the meta-analysis due to the low number of studies, however they are presented with details in the Supplement C in Supplementary Table for interested readers.…”