A recent study has uncovered important information about why some children and teenagers develop mental health issues, such as PTSD, anxiety, or depression, after going through a traumatic experience.
A recent study has uncovered important information about why some children and teenagers develop mental health issues, such as PTSD, anxiety, or depression, after going through a traumatic experience.
While many children manage to bounce back well after facing trauma, others may struggle with mental health complications that can persist for months, years, or even into adulthood.
Research from the University of East Anglia indicates that cognitive psychological factors—such as how children recall the incident and their self-perception afterward—are the most significant indicators of negative mental health outcomes following a traumatic experience.
Co-author Katie Lofthouse from UEA’s Norwich Medical School stated, “Some children and teenagers who have been through traumatic events like car accidents or violence may develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) along with other issues like anxiety and depression.
However, we still do not fully understand why some children end up facing one type of difficulty over another.
Our findings reveal that cognitive psychological elements—like the nature of their memories of the trauma and their self-image afterward—are the strongest predictors of all types of poor mental health.
Other factors, such as the severity of the trauma or a child’s age or gender, were considerably less impactful.
The research team studied 260 children aged 8 to 17 who visited a hospital emergency department due to a single traumatic incident, which included situations like car crashes, assaults, dog bites, and other urgent medical events.
These young participants were evaluated at two and nine weeks post-trauma through self-report questionnaires, phone interviews with their parents, and hospital data, leading to the creation of four predictive models for PTSD, Complex PTSD (CPTSD), depression, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD).
At the nine-week mark, 64% of the participants showed no mental health symptoms, while 23.5% met the criteria for PTSD, and 5.2% for CPTSD. Additionally, 23.9% and 10.7% exhibited notable symptoms of depression and GAD, respectively.
In terms of predicting who might develop these mental health challenges, a cognitive model—focused on thought processes—was deemed the most accurate, while a model addressing social and psychological factors was less effective.
Interestingly, how a child personally perceived the severity of the traumatic event had a greater influence on their mental well-being than objective measures of the event’s severity.
Miss Lofthouse remarked, “These results highlight the risk factors associated with developing mental health disorders after exposure to trauma in young people.
Negative perceptions regarding the traumatic event stood out as a key predictor for all the mental health issues we examined.
This supports the use of treatments like trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy designed to tackle these negative thought patterns.
Moreover, our study indicated that poor recollection of the trauma specifically pointed to PTSD, implying that certain symptoms might signal varying mental health outcomes.
Prior research from UEA highlighted that children are more susceptible to forming PTSD if they believe their emotional responses to traumatic experiences are “abnormal.”
This latest study expands on that groundwork by exploring not just PTSD but also other mental health ramifications such as complex PTSD, depression, and anxiety.
Complex PTSD encompasses all PTSD symptoms while also introducing more severe emotional and psychological issues. These can manifest as challenges in managing intense emotions, feelings of profound shame or guilt, difficulty in trusting others, feelings of detachment or isolation, and ongoing relationship conflicts.
Limited research has been conducted comparing the predictive accuracy of various models for mental health outcomes in trauma survivors, particularly focused on young individuals.
With the recent acknowledgment of Complex PTSD (CPTSD) as a formal diagnosis, the research team aimed to determine if mental health issues could be prognosticated in youth following trauma exposure.
The research further examined other stress factors in life and whether the child was experiencing ongoing pain.
The findings strongly support the notion that a person’s interpretation of their traumatic experience significantly influences PTSD, but also suggest that this model applies broadly to various disorders including Complex PTSD, depression, and anxiety.
Future studies may delve deeper into thoughts associated with specific disorders or concentrate on general distress in the aftermath of trauma.
This research was funded by the Medical Research Council and led by the University of East Anglia in partnership with the University of Cambridge, Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Macquarie University, Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, and King’s College London.
Entitled ‘Predictive models of post-traumatic stress disorder, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety in children and adolescents following a single-event Trauma’, this work is featured in Psychological Medicine.
