Post-traumatic stress disorder in pre-school aged children after a gas explosion.

This is the author-created version of Springer, Ohmi, H. ; Sayoko, K. ; Awai, Y. ; Kamata, S. ; Sasaki, K. ; Tanaka, Y. ; Mochizuki, Y. ; Hirooka, K. ; Hata, A., EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PEDIATRICS, 161(12), 2002, 643-648.鐃緒申The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com. authorTo evaluate the sensitivity of diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in pre-school aged children involved in a gas explosion, post-traumatic symptoms of the children were investigated four times after the accident, immediately, 10 days, 6 months, and 1 year late. Using symptoms on 6 months after the accident, sensitivity of diagnostic criteria was assessed by comparing the fourth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), and alternative criteria for infants and young children (Scheeringa et al. 1995). In addition, published Child Post-traumatic Stress Disorder Reaction Index (CPTSD-RI) and its modified version proposed by us were also evaluated their sensitivity to rate the symptoms. Girls had a tendency to show more post-traumatic symptoms than boys. Although no children met the DSM-IV criteria for PTSD, eight children out of 32 were diagnosed as PTSD with alternative criteria. With our modified CPTSD-RI, all eight children were statistically more distinguishable from those without PTSD than with original one. Our data indicate that the sensitivity of DSM-IV and CPTSD-RI in rating symptoms of pre-school aged children is not sufficient. Alternative criteria of 3 DSM-IV and modified version of CPTSD-RI would be the better choice in this age group