Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale for DSM-5,child and adolescent version: Clinical characteristics of paediatric population

Abstract

Introduction

Posttraumatic stress disorder in the paediatric population has clinical features. The Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale for DSM-5,child and adolescent version (CAPS-CA-5) is the gold standard in positive diagnosis

Objectives

The objectives of our work was to study the clinical characteristics of the paediatric population with the diagnosis of PTSD.

Methods

This is a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted in the child psychiatry department of Mongi Slim Hospital and the forensic medicine department of Charles-Nicolle Hospital, among children older than seven years who were exposed to a potentially traumatic event at least one month before. We made clinical assessment for PTSD using CAPS-CA-5 which is currently being validated in Tunisian dialect. Then We investigated the clinical characteristics of PTSD according to age, gender, history, and event specifics.

Results

We conducted our study with 150 patients . The diagnosis of PTSD according to DSM 5 criteria was retained in 56.2% of patients (N=80).

The average age was 12.4 years with extremes ranging from 7 to 17 years. We noted a female predominance at 58.8% (n=47)

Male gender was significantly associated with persistent avoidance (p=0.03). Sexual assault was significantly associated with the severity of flashback symptoms (p<10-3) and reckless and self-destructive behaviors (p<10-3) and with the frequency of dissociative symptoms (p<10-3).

We also noted in our work that dissociative symptoms were significantly more frequent in victims with no personal psychiatric history with a p value of 0.021.

In our population, we found a predominance of hypervigilance and a greater severity of exaggerated startle reactions in the absence of a family psychiatric history with a p value of 0.048 and 0.008 respectively.

We noted a significant predominance of exaggerated startle reactions in relation to the absence of exposure to previous traumatic events with a p equal to 0.043

Conclusions

The specificities identified in relation to the child should be taken into consideration during further evaluations and further analysis in the general population.

Disclosure of Interest

None Declared