The findings suggest that voluntary rescue workers suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms more often than professionals following demanding rescue missions.
Recently, guidelines for good psychosocial practice for parents who have lost a child at an obstetric or neonatal ward have been criticised. Members of a national association for parents who had lost an infant (N = 566) reported their acute bereavement behavior and rituals and filled in standardized questionnaires for degree of traumatization, symptomatology, and grief. The age of the child was not associated with any measure of distress. Seeing the dead child and having an open coffin were associated with reduced distress, while specific mementoes and the number of mementoes were associated with augmented distress. The gender of the lost and the gender of an eventual new child were also associated with specific changes in distress depending on the age of the deceased child.
The purpose of the study was to investigate psychological distress and the prevalence of PTSD among Icelandic parents of chronically ill children, and the potential effects of social support on distress, at two points in time. The Impact on Family scale (IFS), the Trauma Symptom Checklist (TSC), the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire (HTQ) and the Crisis Support Scale (CSS) were completed by 105 parents of children with various diseases (69 mothers and 36 fathers). Despite the heterogeneity of the sample in terms of disease type, PTSD was present in 13.2% of the parents and an additional 28.6% had subclinical PTSD. Time since diagnosis, length of hospitalizations and disease-related daily care predicted 40% of the HTQ total score.
The aim of the study was to explore the psychological consequences of two earthquakes in Iceland in two probability samples of children aged 10-15 years (67 exposed and 73 nonexposed). Three months after the earthquakes, children answered demographic questions, stressor questions, and completed the Child Posttraumatic Stress Reaction Index (CPTS-RI), the Trauma Symptom Checklist (TSC) and the Crisis Support Scale (CSS). Thirty-three percent of the exposed group and 6% of the control group fulfilled the diagnostic criteria for PTSD. Experiences of great horror during the earthquake and thoughts about future earthquakes explained 49% of the variance in PTSD. Wish for relocation, arousal, and avoidance symptoms predicted psychological distress, as measured by the TSC total score, explaining 65% of the variance. The exposed children reported more emotional support than controls immediately after the earthquake, but not at three months post earthquake. Exposed children who did not receive crisis intervention but reported that they would have wanted it had significantly more PTSD symptoms than all other groups, suggesting that all exposed children should be offered crisis intervention and receive continuous attention from adults even after a moderate disaster.
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