Peritraumatic distress in mothers of severely ill children: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

Peritraumatic distress is a syndrome that involves negative emotions, such as anxiety, helplessness and horror, experienced during and shortly after a traumatic event. It seems that peritraumatic distress, along with peritraumatic dissociation, is one of the strongest predictive factors of post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) [1]. Intensity of peritraumatic distress is significantly related to the intensity of PTSD symptoms, among others in individuals who experienced a natural disaster [2] or motorcycle accident [3] as well as in policemen [4] and paramedics [5].Parents of severely ill children experience extreme emotions due to their child's illness. This tendency applies to parents of children treated in the neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) [6][7][8] as well as parents of children treated for cancer [9]. Moth-