Citation

Hodges M, Godbout N, Briere J, Lanktree C, Gilbert A, Kletzka NT. Child Abuse Negl. 2013; 37(11): 891-898.

Affiliation

Department of Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.chiabu.2013.04.001

PMID

23643387

Abstract

Multiple trauma exposures during childhood are associated with a range of psychological symptoms later in life. In this study, we examined whether the total number of different types of trauma experienced by children (cumulative trauma) is associated with the complexity of their subsequent symptomatology, where complexity is defined as the number of different symptom clusters simultaneously elevated into the clinical range. Children's symptoms in six different trauma-related areas (e.g., depression, anger, posttraumatic stress) were reported both by child clients and their caretakers in a clinical sample of 318 children. Path analysis revealed that accumulated exposure to multiple different trauma types predicts symptom complexity as reported by both children and their caretakers.

Language: en