Childhood Ptsd

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened. Traumatic events that may trigger PTSD include violent personal assaults, natural or human-caused disasters, accidents, or military combat. The DSM-IV has four different criteria for diagnosing a child or adult with PTSD. These include: the individual experienced, witnessed, or was confronted with an event that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others, and the response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror. In children, this may be expressed instead of disorganized or agitated behavior; The trauma is persistently re-experienced; The individual persistently avoids stimuli associated with the trauma, or revels psychological numbing of general responsively; and the individual presents with symptoms of increased arousal (Augustyn et al., 1996).   Symptoms of PTSD include repeatedly re-experiencing the event through intrusive thoughts, dreams or flashbacks or intense fear on exposure to similar circumstances, persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma, numbing of general responsiveness, increased arousal symptoms such as sleep problems and irritability, duration of more then 1 month and significant functioning impairment (Turk et al, 2005).
The objective of the first article was to examine the psychiatric comorbidity between children presenting with PTSD and traumatized children not developing this disorder. The sample size of the study was made up of 117 children ages 6-12, who were before a juvenile/family court secondary to experiencing significant child abuse and/or trauma (Augustyn et al., 1996). The parents were also asked to participate in the study and 87.3% of them agreed. With the parents consent, the testers were able to do a child...