Citation

Stolbach BC, Minshew R, Rompala V, Dominguez RZ, Gazibara T, Finke R. J. Trauma. Stress 2013; 26(4): 483-491.

Affiliation

Chicago Child Trauma Center, La Rabida Children's Hospital, Chicago, Illinois, USA; Department of Pediatrics, The University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1002/jts.21826

PMID

23893459

Abstract

Recently, a new diagnostic construct, developmental trauma disorder (DTD), was proposed to describe the effects of chronic exposure to violence in combination with disruptions in caregiving systems. This study uses archival data to field test the consensus proposed diagnostic criteria for DTD in a sample of urban children (N = 214). Children with complex trauma histories as defined in the proposed DTD Criterion A were much more likely to meet the proposed DTD symptom criteria than children who did not meet the exposure criterion. This field trial of the proposed DTD criteria suggests that the proposed construct of DTD is useful for describing the symptoms induced by ongoing traumatic stressors and disrupted caregiving and that the proposed symptom criteria can differentiate children with histories of exposure to developmental trauma from other trauma-exposed children.

Language: en