Impact of Trauma on Children

Four Years Post-Tsunami: Children’s Well-Being

“…Precisely, the child's active approach to others (support for emotional reasons) and the acceptance of somebody else's support (support by others) mitigate the children's sorrows. "Empathy", as a social skill, contributes to a child's well-being, as deficits in empathy are related with higher verbal aggression (Teten, Miller, Bailey, Dunn, & Kent, 2008) taking into account that increased aggressiveness is viewed as a symptom of trauma (Lubit et al, 2003). In addition, Teten et al (2008) found that an emotional awareness deficit with emotional and language processing characteristics was uniquely associated with impulsive aggression.…”

“…Even 33 years after the Aberfan disaster, where a coal slap heap collapsed on to a primary school, the intensity of experience was still much present in many of the survivor's lives (Morgan, Scourfield, Williams, Jasper, & Lewis, 2003). Yet, different researchers found that the impact of disasters on children may have a deeper and broader impact on their long-term well-being than just PTSD and other trauma-based psychiatric diagnoses (La Greca & Prinstein, 2002;Lubit, Rovine, Defrancisi, & Eth, 2003). Intensified startle reactions, hypervigilance, numbing and withdrawal (that often arise after disasters) interfere with attempts to reflect, express and manage affect and make it difficult to successfully engage in social and work activities (Pynoos, Steinberg, & Wraith, 1995).…”

Personality Traits in Patients Affected with Flood - A Hospital Based Study

“…[4,5] Disasters threaten personal safety, overwhelm defense mechanisms and disrupt community and family structure . [6] Viswanath et al in 2012 [7] reported that the medical and mental health needs of geriatric survivors deserve special consideration and allocation of resources on a priority basis. Math et al [8] had reported that interventions such as art therapy, informal education, group discussions, dramas, storytelling, activity scheduling, yoga, relaxation, sports/games, providing factual information, and educating parents and teachers can help in a number of ways.…”

Flooding and schools: experiences in Hull in 2007

“…Blom, 1986;McFarlane, 1987;Saylor, 1993;Vogel and Vernberg, 1993;Lonigan et al, 1994;Shelby and Tredinnick, 1995;Gibbs, 1996;Lubit et al, 2003, Weems et al, 2009) and more specifically on the way that flooding has affected children (Earls et al, 1988;Swenson et al, 1996;Saigh et al, 1998;Childs et al, 2004) focuses on children's personal experiences,. The levels of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which are common in the short term (Swenson et al 1996) and which sometimes persist following exposure to a traumatic event may be regarded as the 'normal' reactions of those people exposed to an abnormal disaster event (Alexander and Wells, 1991;Yehuda et al, 1998), but they are nonetheless significant in their potential effects on students' abilities to learn.…”