Open AccessChildren's Adjustment Following Hurricane Katrina: The Role of Primary Caregivers
Author(s) -
GilRivas Virginia,
Kilmer Ryan P.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
american journal of orthopsychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.959
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1939-0025
pISSN - 0002-9432
DOI - 10.1111/ajop.12016
Subject(s) - distress , psychology , coping (psychology) , context (archaeology) , primary caregiver , depressive symptoms , suicide prevention , poison control , injury prevention , clinical psychology , hurricane katrina , occupational safety and health , psychiatry , medicine , anxiety , developmental psychology , natural disaster , medical emergency , meteorology , paleontology , physics , pathology , biology
Hurricane Katrina severely disrupted the lives of many children and families in the central Gulf Coast of the United States. Face‐to‐face interviews with child–caregiver dyads were conducted at approximately 1 year posthurricane (T1) and 6–10 months later (T2). The contribution of several factors—caregiver's self‐reported symptomatology and coping advice and child perceptions of caregiver distress, unavailability, warmth, and caregiver–child conflict—to child‐reported posttraumatic stress symptoms ( PTSS ) and depressive symptoms was examined. Findings provide partial support for the importance of the caregiving context to children's adjustment. Specifically, higher levels of caregiver–child conflict at T1 were associated with more PTSS at T2, controlling for baseline symptoms. In contrast, higher levels of caregiver education were negatively related to child PTSS at T2. After adjusting for objective hurricane exposure and symptoms at T1, none of the caregiving variables was related to child‐reported depressive symptoms at T2. The implications of these findings for efforts to promote children's adjustment after disaster are discussed.