Development of a Brief Screen for Symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Young Children: The Young Child PTSD Screen.
Michael S Scheeringa
PMID 30608285WHAT IT FOUND
In 284 trauma-exposed young children, a brief parent screen flagged every child with five or more PTSD symptoms, but it also flagged many below that threshold.
A negative result was reassuring; a positive result needs full assessment.
Key findings
01The final screen caught every child who had five or more developmentally adapted PTSD symptoms in the trauma-exposed sample.
02The same screen correctly cleared only 42% of children who did not meet the five-symptom target.
03In 46 children without life-threatening trauma, the six most sensitive combinations produced three to five false positives each.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The screen was not tested as a stand-alone self-administered measure; all ratings came from trained interviews, so real-world questionnaire use may differ. Children were assessed mostly one to three years after first trauma, so the screen has not been checked in the first six months after trauma. The control group differed from the trauma-exposed group: control children were younger, mothers were younger and less educated, and more fathers lived in the home. The sample excluded children with severe head injury, intellectual disability, autism, blindness, deafness, or non-English-speaking families, so the screen may not apply to those children. The screen was designed for high sensitivity, so a positive result is not a diagnosis and many children below the five-symptom target were flagged. No combination clearly stood out on impairment or false positives; the final choice also depended on face validity.
Declared interests
No conflicts-of-interest declaration is provided in the supplied text; the article is listed as NIH extramural research support.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read a positive screen as a PTSD diagnosis. The screen was built to catch possible cases, and its specificity was 42%, so many children below the five-symptom target were flagged.