Posttraumatic stress among children in Kurdistan.

AIM

To identify a posttraumatic stress disorder profile for the Child Behaviour Checklist.

METHOD

Checklist item scores for 806 school-aged children in Iraqi Kurdistan (201 randomly selected from the general population, 241 orphans, 199 primary medical care visitors and 165 hospital in-patients) were analysed against the Posttraumatic Stress Symptom Scale for Children (PTSS-C) scores, estimating not only stress diagnoses, but also nonstress-related, child-specific posttraumatic symptoms.

RESULTS

Twenty checklist items, which revealed significant correlations with the stress diagnoses, formed the checklist-stress profile with acceptable reliability and validity, and significant correlation to the PTSS-C estimates.

CONCLUSION

A child-specific stress profile for the checklist is recommended for use as a screening instrument.