Child disaster victims supper cumulative trauma from daily stress

 

[caption id="attachment_13448" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Asias earthquake aftermath, 2004 - wikimedia commons"][/caption]

Carol Forsloff - A new study done of children who have gone through serious traumas, as in the case of Sri Lanka with both war and the 2004 tsunami, suffer stress from these events that exacerbate problems of daily living.

The studies appear in a special section on children and disaster in the July/August 2010 issue of the journal Child Development.  It has implications for how children need support following serious disasters, especially when they are faced afterwards with stressful conditions for coping with everyday situations.

New findings on cumulative trauma add to the concerns established by UNICEF on how post-traumatic stress disorder is the most common effect on children of disasters and wars.

“They came back…my dreams of the waves coming. I felt afraid,” says Nur Alia of her recurring nightmares. The young girl has attended about seven months of counselling since the beginning of the year. “She was taking medication for her nightmares, but in the last few months she discontinued treatment as her condition seemed to improve. But she has since relapsed,” says Dr. Sarimah Bt Sudin as she smiles gently at Nur Alia.  This incident took place in 2005 in Malaysia, and UNICEF underlines for some children these issues can last years if not a lifetime.




Researchers at California State University, Los Angeles, Harvard School of Public Health, and Claremont Graduate University, found in their assessment of more than 400 Sri Lankan youths ages 11 to 20 who survived the tsunami looked not just at the impact of the disaster itself but also the impact on ordinary daily stressors.

The study found of these young people found while war and disaster have had a direct effect on the youths' psychological health,  the additional issues faced by them that includes poverty, family violence, and lack of safe housing also impact them and the disasters exacerbate these issues as well.

"By making sure not to miss the importance of ongoing stressors in youths' daily lives, our study highlights the need for holistic policies and programs that focus on reducing these current stressors," observes Gaithri A. Fernando, associate professor of psychology at California State University, Los Angeles, who led the study.

Another study was conducted by researchers at Bielefeld University, the University of Minnesota, the Vivo Foundation, and the University of Konstanz; Bielefeld University and the University of Konstanz  in Germany.  This study looked at almost 1,400 Tamil children ages 9 to 15 living at home or in a temporary shelter for refugees who had been affected by both war and a natural disaster. Researchers used data from four cross-sectional studies done from 2002 to 2006 for their study that were assembled by teachers trained as counselors to help traumatized children.  Researchers looked at how children coped with other risk factors in their lives following their experience with war and natural disaster and learned that there is a cumulative effect experienced years after.

What researchers found was particularly difficult for these children were very severe exposure to trauma, loss of family members, and domestic violence.

Research concludes, "As a group, children are the most vulnerable to the harmful long-term psychological consequences of violence and destruction. This study can inform those developing programs to help traumatized youngsters."