The Effects of PTSD on Children

It is natural for anyone at any age to experience a PTSD because of varying serious events that occurs in our daily lives. However, research has shown that the effects from the PTSD vary across people of different age categories. Most importantly, the scope of this paper allows us to understand the effects of PTSD in children. In specific, the paper reviews and discusses peer-reviewed journals that focus on the same topic. Effects of PTSD Much of the literature that focus on the topic of PTSD, have sought to understand the exposure of children and adolescents towards a one-time traumatic events such as natural disasters, school shootings, accidents, abuse, or sexual assault. This could be more specifically if such an event occurs when a child in already at a sensitive developmental stage.

However, it is imperative to point out that majority of the studies fail to report the age of children at the time when their families go through traumatic events. Nonetheless, the findings by Liberty, et al showed that young children who experienced traumatic disasters including earthquakes, forest fires, and flooding made majority of children aged between 6-15 years scored high in their total behaviour problems than the post-trauma group. Most importantly, the post-trauma group recorded high levels of withdrawal, too fearful and anxious, difficult to concentrate and socialize with others, unhappy, sad, depressed, and sudden changes in their moods. Similarly, young children have a tendency of expressing their symptoms through stories, drawings, or plays. Consequently, this would also imply that for children that spend much of their time with their parents while growing up, receive education and company that shape them on ways to achieve self-control and self-discipline.

Marcelo and Veludo illustrate that parents can become role models as a learning point for their children on ways to speak politely, develop good personality, goodwill, and honesty. Similarly, Loeb, et al (2011) explain that parents and children that express themselves as role models to others and commit themselves to showing other children aspects such as correct attitude and right way of communication, would easily translate into good personality and behaviour. On the contrary, however, children that start to experience PTSD during early stages of growth such family violence, abuse, and quarrels, would give unpleasant experience to a child. Such a child be feel mentally and physically hurt. Consequently, this affects or disrupts the attachment relationship responsible for behavioural issues and anxiety.

Children require strong and constant relationship with their parents to form strong emotions (NSCDC, 2004)). Additionally, children also experience maltreatment when parents undergo prolonged deployment in risk stricken areas. The effect of PTSD goes beyond emotions in order to induce stress on processing speed, resilience, attention and the functioning of children. Welsh (2013) conducted a similar study to understand brain development among children living in urban areas. Furthermore, studies have also sought to understand the effect of PTSD on children that have undergone all the psychological stages of development. Mok-Kim-Man (2013) study looks at an overview of early childhood experiences that influences their psychology. According to the study, mothers and sometimes caregivers play vital roles of caring and forming socialization patterns among children. For instance, there is a high level of association of varying paternal involvement and children development of cognition, emotions, and social.

In normal cases, it is expected that a child would depend on a psychology in order to develop a sustainable mental health as well as development of wellness initiatives. A majority of children have the capacity of adapting to their experiences for a period of five years from the time of birth. The second stage in a child’s psychological development involves kindergarten education. Any parent that takes the initiative to take his/her child through a proper kindergarten education helps a child avoid many problems in future learning levels. Kindergartens exposes children to early-age learning where they start to benefit from social activities such as drawing, participating in games, choir, general knowledge, and basic language skills. Apart from these areas, Nunes-Costa, Lamela and Figueiredo (2009) maintain that any child exposed to early-learning environment ensures that one starts to integrate with others and develop appropriate communication skills.

Out of the traumatic events, PTSD was found as one of the serious mental health consequences to children. Hence, Qureshi et al went ahead to conduct a systematic review of data from different studies that have succeeded in examining cognitive and memory function of the people affected by PTSD exposed to physical or psychological trauma that do not have PTSD. Most importantly, they sought to understand the patterns of cognitive impairment among the subjects and those that was capable of depicting constant association with PTSD. Among the studies reviewed were those that focused on veterans, abused individuals, refugees and war victims, undergraduates, and survivors of natural disaster. Qureshi et al (2011) conclude that PTSD has a strong association with cognitive impairment of individuals particularly for those that have history of trauma.

Furthermore, there were variations in treatment components used on children. Nonetheless, two major clinical implications are evident from the above findings. First, young people that present mild symptoms of PTSD could be treated through structural monitoring of symptoms. Second, short term CBT could be used to reduce different levels of PTSD caused by single-incident traumatic events. Conclusion This paper sought to discuss the effects arising from the post-traumatic stress disorders towards children. The Effects of Trauma on Brain Development in Infancy. Honours Theses. Paper 2486. Liberty, K. , Tarren-Sweeney, M. , Stettler, E. M. , Gavila, T. , Stein, A. , & Chinitz, S. , Korzilius, H. , & de Jongh, A. Assessing posttraumatic stress disorder in children with mild to borderline intellectual disabilities. European Journal of Psych traumatology, 71-9. Mok-Kim-Man, M.