What is the difference between PTSD in children and PTSD in adults?
Post -traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) concerns a psychological state in which the occurrence of a highly stressful event is still experiencing long after. The various symptoms that are known to characterize PTSDs have been generally divided into several categories: avoidance, re -captivity and hyperaroussal. Although PTSD in adults shows symptoms in all three of these groups, child PTSD usually does not, especially in the area of avoidance. The disorder presents in children differently and affects them in other ways. For example, brain development in children can be significantly hindered by testimony about cases of violence.
In order for this disorder to be diagnosed, the individual must be exposed to extremely traumatic occurrence during which feelings of significant helplessness and fear are formed. The individual then repeatedly experiences a specific event again and tries to prevent exposure to everything that would remember him. This is generally achieved by dissociation, the way of distancing yourself from the situation or experience of mental eldto him. In order to understand the difference between PTSD in children and PTSD in adults, it is necessary to know that the diagnostic criteria in the diagnostic statistical manual of mental disorders ( dsm-iv-tr ) are not entirely true for 2000. Mental health experts usually take into account in the diagnosis of children's PTSD using certain alternative criteria.
Some symptoms of PTSD childhood may not be identifiable or show at all, at least not in the way of PTSD in adults. Especially applicable to small children are language skills compared to adolescents and adults. For this reason, symptoms of PTSD, such as dissociation, may not notice in a small child. Instead, these manifestations occur in the form of withdrawal from interaction of social and game, which can often fluctuate with cases of significant anxiety. The way anxiety represents in childhood PTSD differs from PTSD in adults, at the fact that children will have teNdence to experience nightmares or night horrors, while adults may have insomnia or sudden panic attacks, resulting in exaggerated physiological reactions, including racing pulse and hyperventilation.
indicated by extensive research, traumatic circumstances and the resulting effects of PTSDs have a significant impact on brain development in infants and children, especially what is associated with children's abuse, including emotional neglect, as well as witnesses of meeting repeating household violence. The developmental delay may result in anxiety that tends to perform tasks requiring prolonged attention and concentration particularly problematic. Social growth and maturation may also be affected.