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Polytraumatization and psychological symptoms in children and adolescents

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Abstract

Previous research on the impact of traumatic experiences in children and adolescents has focused almost entirely on the effect of single trauma. Research on cumulative traumas has been lacking, but Finkelhor (Child Abuse Negl 31:7–26, 2007) has recently directed the attention to the concept of polyvictimization. As an extension of this concept, this study examined the impact of polytraumatization, operationalized as the number of different potentially traumatic events. The study population comprised two cross-sectional samples of school-aged children (n = 270) and adolescents (n = 400). Information of life-time incidence of traumatic events was collected by the life incidence of traumatic events (LITE), and psychological symptoms by the parent version of the strengths and difficulties questionnaire (SDQ) for the school children and the self-report trauma symptom checklist for children (TSCC) for the adolescents. We found that exposure to at least one traumatic event was common in both the samples (63% of the children and 89.5% of the adolescents). The number of different traumatic events, polytraumatization, was highly predictive of symptoms in both samples, and with a few exceptions surpassed the impact of specific events in exploratory analyses. We furthermore replicated previous findings of the important impact of interpersonal over non-interpersonal events on symptoms in both samples, and found an indication that this effect differed by gender in different manners in the two samples. This study emphasizes the significance of both the quantity of traumatic events, polytraumatization, as well as the quality, interpersonal events.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Per A Gustafsson, Nina Nelson and Elin Allansson for their invaluable contribution to design and implementation of the younger children study. The study was supported by The Swedish Medical Society/The Foundation of Söderström-Königska Sjukhemmet, the County of östergötland and The Erik Johan Ljungberg Educational Fund. The adolescent study was supported by the Mayflower Foundation.

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  1. Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Linköping University, 581 85, Linköping, Sweden

    Per E. Gustafsson, Doris Nilsson & Carl Göran Svedin

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  1. Per E. Gustafsson
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  2. Doris Nilsson
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  3. Carl Göran Svedin
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Correspondence to Per E. Gustafsson.

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Gustafsson, P.E., Nilsson, D. & Svedin, C.G. Polytraumatization and psychological symptoms in children and adolescents. Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry 18, 274–283 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-008-0728-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-008-0728-2

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