engleski

Age‐developmental stage and severity of trauma related symptoms, anxiety and depressive symptoms in participants who lost their fathers during the war in Croatia

A number of authors have noted that older children are more vulnerable than younger children to the psychological effects of trauma. The younger child's psychological response resonates with parental response as they have less cognitive capacity to independently evaluate dangers. Some researches explained those with circumstances that surround the death can prevent children and adolescents from grieving the loss, thus increasing the risk of long‐term consequences. There are many explanations for such findings such as social, community and family cohesiveness and support systems, but it could be also temperamental and biological factors that modulate stress response. Children of different ages will experience a traumatic event in a different ways. The most important in generalization the research findings is recognizing that children of different ages think differently, act differently and have different emotional functioning. Experiences that are extremely traumatic to an adult may be perceived by a young child as something that is not so frightening. On the other hand, the fear that the child feels will more frequently be a reflection of that of the adult rather than generated by the child's own perception of the event. So, the individual experience of the trauma is age dependent. Our study focused on children who lost their fathers in conditions of war. The participants were at the time of interviewing mostly adolescents or young adult which means that some of them were not even born when their father died, some of them were very young children, preschoolars and some of them were adolescents. Our aim was to explore the association between age‐developmental stage and severity of trauma related symptoms, anxiety and depressive symptoms in participants who lost their fathers during the war. The study included 114 people who lost their fathers during the war in Croatia, who came to the physical and psychiatric examination organized by Ministry of family, war veterans and intergenerational solidarity. Data were collected using a structured clinical interview which also included socio‐demographic data. Data about former and current psychiatric symptoms were collected using the following instruments: Clinician Administrated PTSD Scale, Hamilton anxiety scale, Hamilton depression scale. Results showed that there was significant correlation between age and results on used scales. The participants who lost their fathers in very young age or even before they were born showed less trauma symptoms, less anxiety and depressive symptoms then participants who lost their fathers in older age. The study confirmed that the individual experience of the trauma of losing the father in war circumstances is age dependent.

trauma related symptoms; anxiety and depressive symptoms; loss of father

nije evidentirano