Early Childhood Trauma Paper

The purpose of this study was to study trauma and its effects on infants, toddlers, and children as they are an extremely vulnerable group of people and are understudied in this realm. This was a literature review exploring six sections: 1) how young children exhibit trauma and their reaction to trauma, 2) post traumatic stress disorder in preschoolers the history and development of justifiable diagnostic measures, 3) how children react to trauma and the prevalence and disorders associated with PTSD 4) how early childhood development may be affected 5) any factors related to children (risk and protective) 6) current treatment criteria for early childhood. The authors also proposed changed to the DSM-IV-TR and included it in their paper. Since this article was a …show more content…
The population examined children under the age of five in the United States. The measures that were being examined in this article were the measures that determine PTSD and trauma and their symptom criteria in the DSM-IV-TR. The authors believe there is not enough information in the DSM-IV-TR to diagnose or help a clinician diagnose PTSD and trauma in children under the age of five. The procedure was the literature review done on the DSM-IV-TR and the authors went through and studied how trauma was exhibited in children under five, examining how young children re-experience their trauma, how they may avoid their trauma, have hyperarousal, and other features that are related to their trauma. A confounding aspect of the PTSD diagnosis is that the client/patient must verbally describe their experiences with trauma and their feelings and emotions. Preschool age children and toddlers would have a hard time saying anything about their trauma even though they might be exhibiting symptoms