Study Examines Stress Disorder in Children, Parents After Traffic Injury

A new HRSA-supported study on acute stress disorder (ASD) in children and their parents after a child has been injured in a traffic accident indicates that both show ASD symptoms regardless of a parent’s presence at the accident scene.  More than 300,000 children are injured in traffic crashes each year in the United States.

Flaura Winston and a team of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine conducted the study, the first that looks at ASD in parents of children injured in traffic accidents.  “Acute Stress Disorder Symptoms in Children and Their Parents After Pediatric Traffic Injury,” published in the June issue of Pediatrics (www.pediatrics.org), investigates ASD symptoms in children ages 5 to 17 who were admitted to a large urban pediatric hospital after a car or bicycle accident.

Questionnaires given to children and parents or guardians covered four types of ASD symptoms: dissociation, re-experiencing, avoidance and hyperarousal.

Study findings indicate:

• Eighty-eight percent of children and 83 percent of parents reported at least one of the four types of ASD symptoms, affecting 90 percent of the families;
• Twenty-eight percent of children and 23 percent of parents experienced all four ASD symptoms; and
• Children most often reported dissociation -- feelings of unreality or emotional numbing.

One-quarter to one-third of injured children and 15 percent of their parents develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after a traffic accident.  PTSD is diagnosed when symptoms persist for more than one month.

Due to the high prevalence of pediatric traffic crashes and the fact that PTSD is often not diagnosed, the researchers urge pediatricians to be alert to any distress in order to prevent problems later.  They recommend calling family members several days and one to two weeks after an accident to offer them an opportunity to discuss their feelings about the crash.  The authors also suggest questioning families of regular patients during routine health visits about whether their children had experienced a recent traffic injury.

For more information on the Maternal and Child Health Bureau’s Research Program, visit www.mchb.hrsa.gov.

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