Chapter 12 - Trauma and Stressors - Related disorders

Define a traumatic event.

Traumatic events involve exposure to actual or threatened harm or fear of death or injury, and include a wide range of intentional acts and unintentional circumstances.

List the four primary acts of child maltreatment.

physical abuse, neglect, sexual abuse, and psychological abuse.

Describe how coronavirus pandemic differentially impacted.

Research studies have demonstrated that low-income communities and communities of color have been differentially and maximally impacted by the coronavirus pandem

expectable environment

External conditions or surroundings that are considered to be fundamental and necessary for healthy development. The expectable environment for infants includes protective and nurturing adults and opportunities for socialization; for older children it includes a supportive family, contact with peers, and ample opportunities to explore and master the environment.

Identify at least three forms of childhood stress that may lead to poor adaptation.

bullying, parental separation, peer conflict, and many others

State whether chronic stress challenges children’s developing biological and social development.

Chronic stress challenges the child’s developing biological and social development.

Identify at least three correlates to child trauma.

poverty and inequality, social isolation, and unhealthy cultural norms concerning child-rearing practices and family privacy

Allostatic load

Refers to the progressive “wear and tear” on biological systems caused by chronic stress.

polyvictimization

The experience of victimization across multiple domains of the child’s life.

Physical neglect

Failure to provide for a child’s basic physical needs, including refusal of or delay in seeking health care, inadequate provision of food, abandonment, expulsion from the home or refusal to allow a runaway to return home, inadequate supervision, and inadequate provision of clean clothes.

Educational neglect

Failure to provide for a child’s basic educational needs, including allowing chronic truancy, failing to enroll a child of mandatory school age in school, and failing to attend to a special educational need.

Emotional neglect

Failure to provide for a child’s basic emotional needs, including marked inattention to the child’s needs for affection, refusal of or failure to provide needed psychological care, spousal abuse in the child’s presence, and permission for drug or alcohol use by the child.

Physical abuse

The infliction or risk of physical injury as a result of punching, beating, kicking, biting, burning, shaking, or otherwise intentionally harming a child.

Psychological abuse

Abusive behavior that involves acts or omissions by parents or caregivers that cause, or could cause, serious behavioral, cognitive, emotional, or mental disorders. (Also known as emotional abuse.)

Sexual abuse

Abusive acts that are sexual in nature, including fondling a child’s genitals, intercourse, incest, rape, sodomy, exhibitionism, and commercial exploitation through prostitution or the production of pornographic materials.

relational disorders

Disorders that occur in the context of relationships, such as child abuse and neglect. Relational disorders signify the connection between children’s behavior patterns and the availability of a suitable child-rearing environment.

Information-processing disturbances

Cognitive misperceptions and distortions in the way events are perceived and interpreted.

List the three symptoms of PTSD.

Children with PTSD reexperience the traumatic event, avoid associated stimuli, and display symptoms of extreme arousal.

List the causes of PTSD in children.

Stress and trauma can result in significant PTSD-related symptoms at any time from childhood to adulthood, including mood disturbances, emotional and behavioral problems, difficulties in sexual adjustment, and unhealthy relationships.

Identify how children with disinhibited social engagement disorder behave toward strangers.

Children with disinhibited social engagement disorder show a pattern of overly familiar and culturally inappropriate behavior with relative strangers.

Reactive attachment disorder (RAD)

Disorder characterized by a pattern of disturbed and developmentally inappropriate attachment behaviors, likely due to social neglect in early childhood.

Disinhibited social engagement disorder (DSED)

Disorder characterized by a pattern of overly familiar and culturally inappropriate behavior with relative strangers, due to social neglect.

Acute stress disorder

A form of trauma and stressor-related disorder characterized by the development during or within 1 month after exposure to an extreme traumatic stressor of at least nine symptoms associated with intrusion, negative mood, dissociation, avoidance, and arousal. These are largely the same symptoms as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), described below, but last for 1 month or less

adjustment disorder

A short-term diagnosis given to individuals who react to common (and less severe) forms of stress in an unusual or disproportionate manner.

post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

A form of trauma- and stressor-related disorder wherein the child displays persistent anxiety following exposure to or witnessing of an overwhelming traumatic or stressful event that is outside the range of usual human experience.

cycle-of-violence hypothesis

The repetition of patterns of violent behavior across generations. For example, persons who are abused as children are more likely to be abusive toward others as adults.

dissociation

An altered state of consciousness in which the individual feels detached from the body or self. This process may be voluntary or involuntary, which can be adaptive when resistance or escape from a life-threatening situation is not possible.

traumatic sexualization

One possible outcome of child sexual abuse, wherein the child’s sexual knowledge and behavior are shaped in developmentally inappropriate ways.

emotion regulation

The processes by which emotional arousal is redirected, controlled, or modified to facilitate adaptive functioning.

List the several factors that appear to be important in children’s course of recovery from PTSD.

the nature of the traumatic event, preexisting child characteristics, and family/social support

Define trauma-focused cognitive–behavioral therapy.

this therapy involves a combination of exposure therapy and skill building to allow the individual to practice more effective ways of coping with intrusive memories and emotions

Trauma-focused cognitive–behavioral therapy (TF-CBT)

A form of exposure therapy that incorporates elements of cognitive-behavioral, attachment, humanistic, empowerment, and family therapy models.

Complex trauma

Reactions to trauma that consist of more complex patterns extending beyond typical symptoms related to post-traumatic stress disorder.