Psychiatrists recommend taking care of children’s mental health after encountering violent incidents.
When children encounter unexpectedly bad experiences and stay with those things for a long time, it will have a severe impact on their body and mind, causing the children to have haunting memories, leading to mental illness. The mental health of the children’s parents who show anxiety and depression after the event are important factors in the development of PTSD in children.
Dr. Warisa Kanchanachaipoom, a pediatrician specializing in child and adolescent psychiatry at Samitivej Srinakarin Children’s Hospital, stated that mental illnesses or abnormal symptoms after experiencing severe situations, including various dangers, which the medical community calls PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorder), is a mental illness after having to face severe traumatic events, unexpected serious events, dangerous situations that threaten the life of the person or others.
Even though they have to face the event directly or may have witnessed it, including the loss of a loved one in that event, resulting in severe stress because the event was severe enough to cause symptoms and problems in accepting and adjusting. These events are not stress from general loss, but are events that are more severe than normal, including:
- Natural disasters, floods, earthquakes
- Major accidents, including mass casualties
- Rebellion, facing war
- Murder, a loved one commits suicide
- Physical abuse, sexual harassment, such as rape and torture
- Children living in violent families or homes
PTSD symptoms are a group of symptoms that can occur in all genders and ages. They consist of 4 topics.
- Re-experiencing: Recurrent thoughts about the event or sometimes recalling bad memories, causing a sense of having to relive the event over and over again, causing panic. Flashbacks: Recurrent dreams about the event or physical and mental reactions when exposed to symbols, objects or situations that are similar to the past event.
- Fear and avoidance (Avoidance) Fear of a place or situation after experiencing it. Avoid thinking and feeling about things connected to the ทางเข้า UFABET สำหรับสมาชิกใหม่ สมัครวันนี้ รับโบนัสฟรี event. Not daring to face external stimuli that will remind you of the event, such as fear of places, situations, activities, conversations.
- Negative alteration of cognition and mood : lack of positive emotions, unhappiness and lack of interest in participating in activities, feeling alienated from others, persistently negative beliefs and expectations, and negative interpretations. Some people cannot remember important parts of the event, which may lead to distorted thoughts about the causes and consequences of the event. Such thoughts lead to blaming oneself and others, resulting in negative lingering emotions, anger, shyness, fear, and guilt all the time.
- Hyperarousal symptoms are symptoms of constant attention, vigilance, alertness, and often irritability, easily startled, easily angered, and easily startled by loud noises. This results in lack of concentration, difficulty sleeping, difficulty staying asleep, or frequent waking up with a start while sleeping.
If after 4 weeks of the traumatic event these symptoms still occur, or in some cases the symptoms occur later, these symptoms will affect both schoolwork and daily work, making them worse.
Factors that indicate children may have PTSD
- Violence received
- How meaningful was the incident to the patient?
- Length of time of incident
- The patient’s personality and coping methods with stress
- Child age
- Previous experiences
- Conducive environment
- Lack of support from the surrounding society
- Children face ongoing psychological and social difficulties.
The mental health of the parents of children who show anxiety and depression after the incident are important factors in the development of PTSD in children, as well as parents who are not supportive, not encouraging, not friendly to the child, and coercive parenting.
Is PTSD a condition that requires treatment?
Treatment and assistance should be given importance and should be implemented immediately, especially for symptoms that occur in the early stages. If ignored, neglected, not treated, or assistance is delayed, the child will become a chronic patient for a long time.
How to take care of PTSD in the first place
- Monitor mental health symptoms
- Restore the community to normal as soon as possible.
- Screen for symptoms, observe the child’s behavior and symptoms.
- Assess the level of impairment in life of disaster victims to identify possible comorbid mental illnesses, including:
- depression
- Anxiety Disorder
- Phobias
- Use of alcohol and drugs
(with parental involvement in the assessment strongly recommended)
How to treat PTSD
Psychological treatment includes psychotherapy, which involves a variety of methods.
1. Trauma-Focused Cognitive Therapy Explore and talk to children about the incident, suggesting ways to feel relaxed about facing the fearful thing, changing beliefs and distorted thoughts about the symptoms or the incident, training them to control their feelings, thoughts and cope with their own emotions, with the participation of parents to create understanding by educating parents about the incident that the child encountered and the possible reactions that may follow, including giving parents skills to help adjust behavior and correct children’s inappropriate behavior correctly.
2. Cognitive-Behavior Therapy (CBT) Individual psychotherapy
- Parents are involved in child-parental psychotherapy, family therapy is a collaborative exploration of the mind and emotions and finding appropriate ways for parents to help their children.
- Changing and modifying the environment means providing knowledge to teachers, parents, child patients, and those involved in PTSD in child psychiatry by participating in disease prognosis, planning for families to meet and be together again quickly, organizing activities in schools to bring children back to normal as quickly as possible, arranging stable and safe housing, having a system to prevent a repeat of disasters, and restoring the community.
Drug treatment
Currently, the use of SSRIs (Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) drugs such as Sertraline, Paroxetine is effective in treating adults. There is still a lack of research data supporting this in children. Therefore, the use of drugs in children and adolescents should be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Child Psychiatric Recommendations for PTSD in Children
- Having the child’s primary caregiver prioritize responding, encouraging, listening, comforting, and reassuring the child of their safety and reassuring them that they are being cared for, protected, and relied upon.
- Avoid giving interviews that do not affect the treatment or interviews for news purposes.
- Prevent disaster victims from having to keep retelling the same stories.
- Do not criticize or make the child feel guilty, but allow the child to talk about what they want to talk about and how they feel about the incident.
- Try to let the child do normal activities to gradually bring the child back to his/her original state, with adults or parents always watching and encouraging him/her, because parents are an important part in helping to treat symptoms or illnesses from that event well.