Prevalence of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Following Unintentional Injuries in Children

Abstract

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a trauma and stressor-related disorder that might have prominent negative effects on the social and academic life of children. Unintentional injuries are the leading reason for physical disability and death during childhood. We aimed to investigate PTSD symptoms in children withunintentional injuries who weretreated in hospital. Children who were injured due to various causes and treated in emergency servicewere retrospectively evaluated for PTSD symptoms. The PTSD symptoms were assessed by the revised Children's Revised Impact of Event Scale (CRIES-8), and The Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children. The average age of the study sample consisting of fifty-eight male and thirty-one female children (n= 89) was found to be 13.5  2.9. On average, 5.2  3.4 months had passed after the event. The most common cause of injury was traffic accidents (37.1%) and it was followed by falling from high (33.7%), burn (25.8%), and sharp object injury (2.2%). PTSD was prevalent as 24.7% according to K-SADSevaluation. PTSD rates were observed to vary according to the nature of the event that caused the injury. The findings of our study show that more than one-third of the children, who were hospitalized due to unintentional injuries, developed severe PTSD symptoms. Children who treated for unintentional injuries in emergency services should be referred for psychiatric evaluation.

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