PTSD & Children's Learning

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) used to be associated primarily with war veterans who had endured the horrors of war. Researchers, psychologists, and others now understand that PTSD affects many individuals, including many children. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) defines PTSD as personal or witnessed "exposure to actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others with a response of intense fear, helplessness, or horror�[or] agitated behavior" (Ford, et al., 2000, 2).

There are many kinds of events that can be classified as traumatic, including but limited to the following: sexual or physical assault; kidnapping; sudden death of a family member; witnessing violent crimes; or natural disasters (Richards and Bates, 1998, 1). A life threatening illness or life threatening accident may also cause symptoms of PTSD to emerge, though not all who experience traumatic events as those described develop symptoms common to PTSD. When it comes to children and prevalence of PTSD, recent studies suggest that "one in two children in the community and three children or adolescents in psychiatric clinical samples are exposed directly or as witnesses to trauma" (Ford, et al., 2000, 2).

There are different categories assigned to different effects of traumatic stress, including cognitive, behavioral, and somatic-physiological. These effects of traumatic stress are shown below:

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worse performance by the PTSD-positive individuals on measures of short-term memory. This is consistent with the significant impairment of the PTSD-positive subjects in long-delay recall. PTSD-positive subjects recalled fewer list items than did the PTSD-negative and comparison group. (Jenkins, et al., 1998, 2) A useful tool in measuring PTSD in children that educators may find useful is the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children (TSCC). The TSCC was developed as a standardized measure for symptoms including anxiety, depression, anger, posttraumatic stress, dissociation, and sexual concerns in traumatized children (Crouch, Smith, Ezzell, and Sanders, 1999, 2). The learning environment itself is extremely important in helping a child overcome the debilitating learning effects of PTSD. A paradigm shift that has occurred from a treatment perspective regarding PTSD involves an approach and methods that are increasingly ecological and family-focused. Because of this ideological shift, all individuals in the child's environment need to play a larger role in helping the child with PTSD return to normalcy. This includes social workers, health care professional, psychologists and educators. As Greenberg (1999/2000, 1) notes "E

Category: Psychology - P