Articlebronze2010

Exposure to potentially traumatic events in early childhood: differential links to emergent psychopathology

Margaret J. Briggs‐Gowan · Alice S. Carter · Roseanne Clark · Marilyn Christine Augustyn · Kimberly J. McCarthy · Julián D. Ford

227 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Child Abuse and Trauma Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Research

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To examine associations between exposure to potentially traumatic events (PTEs) and clinical patterns of symptoms and disorders in preschool children. METHOD: Two hundred and thirteen referred and non-referred children, ages 24 to 48 months (MN = 34.9, SD = 6.7 months) were studied. Lifetime exposure to PTEs (family violence and non-interpersonal events) and recent stressful life events were assessed with the Preschool Age Psychiatric Assessment (PAPA) and Child Life Events Scale. Child psychiatric symptoms and disorders were assessed with parent-reports in the PAPA, a comprehensive, developmentally sensitive interview. Sociodemographic risk, parental anxiety and depressive symptoms (Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression, Beck Anxiety Inventory), and child developmental level (Mullen Scales of Early Learning) also were assessed. RESULTS: Violence exposure was broadly associated with psychiatric status in the areas of depression, separation anxiety, posttraumatic stress, and conduct problems, whereas potentially traumatic non-interpersonal exposure was associated with phobic anxiety. The majority of the associations between violence exposure and preschoolers' symptoms were significant even when other key factors, including economic disadvantage and parental mood and anxiety symptoms, were controlled statistically. However, parental depressive/anxious symptoms may have partially or fully mediated the relationships between violence exposure and depressive and conduct symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: Evidence of robust associations between violence exposure and early childhood internalizing and externalizing disorders and symptoms highlights the need for longitudinal prospective research concerning neurodevelopmental mechanisms and pathways. Findings underscore the relevance of assessing trauma exposure, particularly interpersonal violence, to identify young children at risk.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 227 citations exist upstream.

References

1977The CES-D Scale 1988An inventory for measuring clinical anxiety: Psychometric properties.2000Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR)2000From Neurons to Neighborhoods 2001From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development 1978Child abuse and neglect: The myth of classlessness.2007Traumatic Events and Posttraumatic Stress in Childhood 2000Posttraumatic stress disorder: the burden to the individual and to society.

Cited by

2015Does the impact of child sexual abuse differ from maltreated but non-sexually abused children? A prospective examination of the impact of child sexual abuse on internalizing and externalizing behavior problems 2018When Nowhere Is Safe: Interpersonal Trauma and Attachment Adversity as Antecedents of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Developmental Trauma Disorder 2009Defining and understanding complex trauma and complex traumatic stress disorders.2011Parsing the Effects Violence Exposure in Early Childhood: Modeling Developmental Pathways 2015

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.