Behavioural and emotional problems in Iranian children four years after parental death in an earthquake

When a parent dies: A scoping review of protective and risk processes for childhood bereavement

The death of a parent can have profound effects on child development. Yet, little is known about the individual and environmental processes that contribute to heterogeneity in child bereavement outcomes. A scoping review was conducted in samples of parentally bereaved children to identify key processes, synthesize results, and determine research gaps. This scoping review identified 23 studies (mainly from the United States), published between 1990 and 2023, that reported child (ages 3-22 years) individual and/or environmental protective and/or risk processes that contributed to bereavement outcomes. Individual processes (i.e., how children manage stressors and think about themselves/their environment) included child coping and perception of themselves and/or their environment. Environmental processes (i.e., contextual resources) included family, mentorship, and stress exposure. Findings can be used to apprise clinicians, families, and policymakers of the unique nature of childhood bereavement and to identify malleable processes to target in interventions designed to prevent problematic outcomes in bereaved children.

Development and validation of the parents' cognitive perception inventory of disaster effects on children's well-being (PCP-DCWB)

BACKGROUND

Parents' cognition about the type and nature of consequences a disaster may pose on the children's psychosocial health, could be a major protective factor against the long-term overwhelming complications. Given the lack of a reliable instrument to measure parents' cognition about disasters' effects on children's well-being, this study was conducted to develop and validate the parents' cognitive perception inventory of disaster effects on children's well-being (PCP-DCWB).

METHODS

In this cross-sectional study 300 parents of the survived primary school aged children from the Iran's northwest earthquake on August 2012 were recruited in the city of Varzegan. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was applied to identify the subcomponents and Cronbach's alpha and Guttmann Split-half coefficients were calculated to assess the internal consistency reliability of the scale.

RESULTS

Structural indicators of the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure (0.69) and Bartlett's test of Sphericity (P < 0.001, df = 153, X² = 618.35) verified interpretability of the EFA output. Applying principal component analysis and direct oblimin rotation in the EFA four latent factors were identified (i.e., perception about child overall mental health, coping with trauma's long-term effects, children or parents' continuing memory of past disaster and perception about behavioral and educational problems) which explained 49.32% of the total variance. The estimated Cronbach's alpha and split-half reliability coefficients (0.71 and 0.52 respectively) supported good internal consistency of the instrument.

CONCLUSION

The study findings revealed sound psychometric attributes of the PCP-DCWB to be applied in assessment of parents' cognition about psychological impacts of a traumatic event on the survived children. The instrument application can shed light on level of pre-disaster preparations in local, national and international scales and help effectiveness assessment of interventions that target maintenance of psycho-social well-being among disaster-affected survivors over time.

Assessing the Mental Health Impact of the 2011 Great Japan Earthquake, Tsunami, and Radiation Disaster on Elementary and Middle School Children in the Fukushima Prefecture of Japan

Background

On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake occurred off of Japan’s Pacific coast, which was followed by huge tsunamis that destroyed many coastal cities in the area. Due to the earthquake and subsequent tsunami, malfunctions occurred at the Fukushima Daiichi (Fukushima I) nuclear power plant, resulting in the release of radioactive material in the region. While recent studies have investigated the effects of these events on the mental health of adults in the region, no studies have yet been performed investigating similar effects among children.

Methods and Findings

This study aims to fill that gap by: 1) assessing the mental health of elementary and middle school children living within the Fukushima prefecture of Japan, and 2) identifying risk and protective factors that are associated with the children’s mental health scores. These factors were quantified using an original demographics survey, the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), and the Impact of Event Scale–Revised (IES-R), the latter two of which have been previously validated in a Japanese setting. The surveys were distributed to approximately 3,650 elementary and middle school students during the months of February and March, 2012. The data suggests that those children who had been relocated to the city of Koriyama had significantly higher SDQ scores than those children who were native to Koriyama (p < .05) as well as a control group that lived outside of the Fukushima prefecture (p < .01). Using a multivariate regression, we also found that younger age and parental trauma were significantly correlated with higher SDQ scores (p < .001), while gender, displacement from one’s home, and exposure to violence were not.

Conclusions

These results suggest that, among children affected by natural disasters, younger children and those with parents suffering from trauma-related distress are particularly vulnerable to the onset of pediatric mental disturbances.

Children's disaster reactions: the influence of exposure and personal characteristics

This paper reviews children's reactions to disasters and the personal and situational factors that influence their reactions. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and posttraumatic stress reactions are the most commonly studied outcomes, though other conditions also occur including anxiety, depression, behavior problems, and substance use. More recently, traumatic grief and posttraumatic growth have been explored. New research has delineated trajectories of children's posttraumatic stress reactions and offered insight into the long-term consequences of their disaster experiences. Risk factors for adverse outcomes include pre-disaster vulnerabilities, perception of threat, and loss and life disruptions post-disaster. Areas in need of additional research include studies on the timing and course of depression and anxiety post-event and their interactions with other disorders, disaster-related functional and cognitive impairment, positive outcomes, and coping.

Grief and Traumatic Grief in Children in the Context of Mass Trauma

Children who have had someone close die as a result of a mass trauma event such as war, armed conflict, acts of terror, political violence, torture, mass accidents, and natural disasters are at risk for biopsychosocial problems. Research on how to classify when grief becomes complicated or traumatic in children is scarce, and while functioning level may provide a good indication, assessing functioning may be difficult in mass trauma environments where routines and structure are often lacking. There are promising trauma- and grief-focused interventions for children post-mass trauma, which are mostly provided in school settings. However, more advanced multi-method interventions are needed that address grief and trauma in the context of the child's overall mental health, parent/caregiver role in assisting the child, family system issues, ways to provide safe caring environments amidst chaos and change, and interventions that take into account local consumer perspectives, including the voices of children.

[Parental death in childhood: the state of theoretical knowledge and clinical challenges in the future]

Although children's psychological adaptation to parental cancer is a wide field for psycho-oncological research, few empirical studies target children bereavement specifically following parental cancer. In this paper, our purpose is to make a state of art about literature concerning parental death. Literature dealing with grief concerns psychopathological consequences of parental loss and most recently post-traumatic growth. Although references about support programs have emerged, few of these programs have been scientifically evaluated. This review underlines that more studies are needed with prospective quantitative and qualitative studies, in order to describe more precisely children bereavement process and long term effects of bereavement. Psychological support for other family members and evaluation of support programs seem to be critical to improve children adaptation to parental death.