Screening and Psychological Debriefing of Adolescent Survivors of Life-Threatening Events

Abstract

There is a perceived need for schools and casualty departments to receive appropriate information and guidelines in order to minimise the effect of PTSD. A recommended screening battery for PTSD was administered at the start of a two-session debriefing group and again three months later to a group of seven young survivors of a minibus accident. No studies using this screen other than those of shipping disasters have been reported to date. Screen scores were compared with those of survivors of the cruise ship Jupiter. No significant differences were found between minibus survivors when assessed at six months (before intervention), and Jupiter survivors, who when assessed at five months had already undergone debriefing. Post-debriefing assessment of minibus survivors demonstrated significant reductions on all measures.

Practitioner Review: The Assessment and Treatment of Post‐traumatic Stress Disorder in Children and Adolescents

“…In the second, Yule (1992) found that children who attended group debriefing meetings after a shipping accident fared better on a range of outcome measures than children who were not offered such help. Additional evidence comes from Stallard and Law's (1993) uncontrolled trial of crisis debriefing showing significant improvements on standardized self-report measures in a small group of young children involved in a road traffic accident. The above studies are suggestive of a beneficial effect of group therapy focused on debriefing but more study is needed.…”

“…It has excellent reliability and good concurrent and predictive validity. Both the 15-item and 13-item versions have proved useful in the assessment of post-traumatic stress when used in conjunction with measures of childhood anxiety, fear, and depression (Stallard & Law, 1993 ;Yule & Udwin, 1991). Such measures include the Birleson Depression Inventory (Birleson, 1981), the Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale (Reynolds & Richmond, 1978), and the Fear Survey Schedule for Children (Ollendick, 1983), all of which have demonstrated validity and reliability.…”

Recovery from post‐traumatic stress disorder in children following road traffic accidents: the role of talking and feeling understood

“…The nature, timing and content of the`talking' that may be helpful requires further clari®cation particularly in view of the current debate regarding the value of professionally facilitated trauma discussions such as psychological debrie®ng (Bisson, 1997;Raphael et al, 1995). However, psychological debrie®ng has rarely been undertaken with children and although some positive bene®ts have been reported (Stallard and Law, 1993) its effectiveness with children has not yet been assessed within a larger study.…”

“…Individual case reports suggest that children of all ages including pre-school children can be signi®cantly psychologically affected by RTAs (Jones and Peterson, 1993;Thompson et al, 1993). Studies of coach and bus crashes involving groups of children have found RTA survivors to suffer signi®cant and prolonged distress (Casswell, 1997;Curle and Williams, 1996;Stallard and Law, 1993;Winje and Ulvik, 1995). Larger studies investigating more everyday RTAs have found 34±45% of child RTA victims suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) 4±7 weeks post-accident with 14±17% being affected at 6 months.…”

Prevention and treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder in the school setting

“…The efficacy of psychoeducational groups has been supported (Cohen, 1998;Cohen, Berliner, & March, 2000;Kruczek & Vitanza, 1999;Nader, 2001), and there is preliminary indication that psychological debriefing is effective (Stallard & Law, 1993).…”