1019 Parental Moderating Factors in Child PTSD

Children between the ages of 8 – 18 years were assessed ( physiological responses) upon admission to a level-1 trauma center for treatment of injury. Six-weeks post-trauma, 15-hour urine samples were collected from children and their mothers. We examined the incidence and relationship between mother and child PTSD symptoms 6-weeks and 7-months post-trauma and explored the impact of overall maternal PTSD symptoms as well as specific PTSD symptom clusters on child PTSD symptom levels with a focus on examining potential child gender differences. Based on the existent literature, we hypothesized that elevated in-hospital urinary cortisol levels would significantly predict child PTSS at follow-up, particularly in boys. Conversely, lower levels of 6-week maternal cortisol were hypothesized to predict 7-month maternal PTSS. Given our prior findings concerning the impact of prior trauma history, we hypothesized that the relationship between child in-hospital cortisol and subsequent PTSS would be stronger in those children without a prior trauma history. It was hypothesized that maternal PTSS and depression would negatively impact the child’s long-term adjustment following their traumatic event. Maternal avoidance was hypothesized to have the greatest impact on child adjustment such that higher rates of acute maternal avoidance were hypothesized to be associated with higher subsequent child PTSS. Given that girls have been found to experience more and longer-lasting PTSS than similarly traumatized boys (Smith et al., 2002; Stallard et al., 2004), maternal PTSS and depression were also hypothesized to impact girls more than boys

United States

Child exposed to an index potentially traumatic event