POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER IN CHILDREN FOLLOWING NATURAL DISASTERS: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF THE LONG-TERM FOLLOW-UP STUDIES
Abstract
The objective of this article was to conduct a systematic review of long-term follow-up studies on Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms in children and adolescents. The MEDLINE and PsycINFO databases were searched from 1980 through January 2014. Studies that examined PTSD symptoms in children for over three years after mass natural disasters were selected. Ten studies, including four cohort studies, four cross-sectional studies, one descriptive study, and one case-series study following disaster-exposed children, met all the selection criteria and thus were included in this review. The follow-up period ranged from three to 20 years after the disasters. Synthesized results regarding PTSD prevalence rate, changes over time, and influential factors on PTSD were summarized and discussed. The reviewed studies indicated that PTSD symptoms decrease rapidly during the first two years after a disaster; however, the long-term course is not yet clear. Several factors including gender and disaster experience appeared to be influential on PTSD symptoms; however, gender effect was possibly confounded by other factors. To examine moderating effects among those influential factors, as well as to avoid confounding, multivariate analytical methods would be beneficial and recommended in future research. Also, recovery patterns await further investigation for better understanding of the factors associated with chronic PTSD.
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Copyright (c) 2015 Akiko Terasaka, Yoshiyuki Tachibana, Makiko Okuyama, and Takashi Igarashi
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