Children's selective coping after a bus disaster: Confronting behavior and perceived support

Abstract

Data were obtained from 675 seventh graders grieving the death of 19 and injury of 14 fellow students in a traffic accident. Frequency of confronting behaviors was inversely related to their intensity. Perceived helpfulness of the various support person categories (oneself, parents, siblings, relatives, friends, classmates, classroom teachers, guidance counselors, psychologists) was related to current stress levels, context of the disaster, and prior helping relationships. Personal loss and situational variables affected confronting behavior and stress reaction levels. Specific helpful support persons affected interest in individual and/or group treatment. Findings were consistent with a model of search and selection of helpful support persons in community-wide stressful situations.

Gender Differences in PTSD in Israeli Youth Exposed to Terror Attacks

“…Social support was assessed via the Support Persons Scale (Milgran & Toubiana, 1996). Factor analysis yielded three groups of supporters: family (α = .75), professional (e.g., teacher, counselor; α = .78), and friends (only 1 item).…”

Collective Adaptive Responses Through Coping and Sensemaking Under Stress

“…Prior literature on the stress and coping process has mainly examined whether recovery from psychological trauma caused by a disaster occurs through individual or group coping efforts as relief and resilience. In such cases, the bus disaster in Petah Tikva (Milgram & Toubiana, 1996) and the Swissair Flight 111 airline disaster (Stewart et al, 2004) with individual coping, and the Madrid bombings (Pa´ez et al, 2007) with collective coping. However, we make no inference as to how and why individual coping is transformed into collective coping by social interactions in communities in times of disaster.…”

Children Involved in Road Traffic Accidents: Psychological Sequelae and Issues for Mental Health Services

“…Early attempts to detail the psychological consequences of RTAs upon children consist of descriptive accounts of individual cases (Jones & Peterson, 1993;Thompson, McArdle, & Dunne, 1993). Studies of groups of children involved in bus or coach crashes, often in which there has been a fatality, have also been documented (Casswell, 1997;Curle & Williams, 1996;Klingman, 1987;Milgram & Toubiana, 1996;Stallard & Law, 1993;Tyano et al, 1996;Winje & Ulvik, 1998). Postal surveys of children attending accident and emergency departments have been undertaken (Canterbury & Yule, 1997) but it has only been in the past three years that larger scale studies of children involved in everyday RTAs have been reported.…”