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Complex Trauma Exposure and Symptoms in Urban Traumatized Children: A Preliminary Test of Proposed Criteria for Developmental Trauma Disorder
Author(s) -
Stolbach Bradley C.,
Minshew Reese,
Rompala Vikki,
Dominguez Renee Z.,
Gazibara Tanja,
Finke Robert
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
journal of traumatic stress
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.259
H-Index - 134
eISSN - 1573-6598
pISSN - 0894-9867
DOI - 10.1002/jts.21826
Subject(s) - stressor , construct (python library) , psychology , test (biology) , clinical psychology , developmental psychology , computer science , paleontology , biology , programming language
Recently, a new diagnostic construct, developmental trauma disorder (DTD), was proposed to describe the effects of chronic exposure to violence in combination with disruptions in caregiving systems. This study uses archival data to field test the consensus proposed diagnostic criteria for DTD in a sample of urban children ( N = 214). Children with complex trauma histories as defined in the proposed DTD Criterion A were much more likely to meet the proposed DTD symptom criteria than children who did not meet the exposure criterion. This field trial of the proposed DTD criteria suggests that the proposed construct of DTD is useful for describing the symptoms induced by ongoing traumatic stressors and disrupted caregiving and that the proposed symptom criteria can differentiate children with histories of exposure to developmental trauma from other trauma‐exposed children.