Traumatic stress in delinquent adolescent girls

Abstract

The investigation centered on clinical features and risk factors of posttraumatic stress disorder.

Methods:

clinical, experimental. PTSD symptoms were assessed according PTSD diagnostic criteria (ICD-10). Statistical calculations (SPSS): descriptive statistics, t-criterion, correlation,Mann-Whitney criterion.

Discussion:

of 70 delinquent adolescent girls (DAG), 97% were exposed to some traumatic event in lifetime, 77% had PTSD symptoms, including 38,5% in severe form. The largest risk of PTSD development in DAG was associated with rape, the death of a parent, long enforced separation from them. Risk factors of PTSD development in DAG depended on personality, cranial-brain injury, sexual-role behavior disturbance, family problems. A high index on the Spilberger test for personality anxiety, hypochondria, affect rigidity, psyshasthenia, autization with a low index on the MMPI correction scale and primary use of immature personality defense mechanisms (regression and projection)- are personality predictors of PTSD development in DAG.

Conclusions:

practically all DAG were exposed to single traumatic event in lifetime. Roughly 40% of DAG developed clinically severe PTSD, almost three times more than in girls with socially approved behavior. The largest risk of PTSD development in DAG was associated with rape. The other significant predictive risk factors: low socioeconomic family status; lack of social and psychological support; anxiety tendency in early childhood; unformed mature personality defense mechanisms when adolescent. It is typical for severe PTSD in delinquent girls to be relatively equally represented by reexperience, avoidance, increased arousal; high degree comorbidity with other anxiety disorders (panic attacks, obsessive-compulsive disorder), somatoform and depressive disorders.