A number of interesting conferences take place in the next few months. They all focus on trauma exposure, traumatic stress and mental health. And for three of them submission deadlines are approaching rather quickly… Continue reading
Don’t think of a pink elephant.
It’s a classic example of how thought suppression works: counterproductively. You will think of a pink elephant. Wegner and colleagues have shown that it is very difficult to suppress a thought. If you try, it’s very likely that you will think about it more than if you don’t.
This problematic nature of mental control doesn’t apply to fancy experimental settings only. It is thought to play an important role in posttraumatic stress symptoms. Survivors who try harder to avoid thoughts about (or images of) a terrifying moment such as a car crash, are more prone to develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Avoidance of trauma-related thoughts makes it more difficult to challenge unhelpful beliefs related to the trauma (see the cognitive model by Ehlers & Clark).
Recently, researchers have started to look at the role of thought suppression in children. The first studies show strong relations with posttraumatic stress symptoms (see also the meta-analysis by Trickey et al that I recently discussed). Understanding which cognitive processes take place in the development of PTSD in children is essential for our design of helpful interventions. Continue reading
This is a guest post by Dr. Meghan Marsac. Meghan is a behavioral researcher and the Director of Training at the Center for Injury Research & Prevention at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Meghan has recently led the development of Coping Coach, a web-based video game for children experiencing acute traumatic stress, and The Cellie Coping Kit, a toolkit for children with chronic diseases and their families.
As a field, we have made significant progress in developing models and identifying key risk factors associated with the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in children who experience acute medical traumatic events (see these key publications). Additionally, we have given much attention to the evaluation of preventive interventions. For example, our team has recently evaluated After The Injury, a web-based intervention for parents of injured children.
However, a standard process for the development of preventive interventions is less clear, and therefore this post provides you with some starting points. Below is a list of tips to consider and questions to ask when beginning to develop a new preventive intervention:
One of the main questions of child trauma psychologists is which children are most vulnerable for PTSD after a traumatic event. The answer would help us to develop interventions that address causes of distress and to focus on the children most in need.
Recently, a fourth meta-analysis on predictors of posttraumatic stress in children has been published, which makes it interesting to compare findings and methods (yes, in that order, for busy people). It gives clinicians insight in risk factors for PTSD and it shows academics what needs to be studied in the next few years.
These are the four meta-analyses I know of, published over a period of 6 years: Kahana et al. (2006), Cox et al. (2008), Alisic et al. (2011), and Trickey et al. (2012). In a nutshell, the reviews combined correlational effect sizes to see which risk factors are associated with children’s posttraumatic stress symptoms. Their methods varied, which I will summarize below, but the findings converge to a number of interesting conclusions. Continue reading
Last week, I tried to compile a list of trauma and PTSD experts who are part of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS) or affiliated societies. It turned out that we have only a handful of active twitterers, while the societies have thousands of members. At the last annual ISTSS conference in November, we had only two people tweeting.
It’s a missed opportunity. Twitter is a fantastic tool to build a prospering research community (see e.g., Mollett et al., 2011; Reinhardt et al., 2009;). I’ll give you some examples:
While I was searching for tweeters for my list, @raulpacheco started the #myresearch hashtag, asking people to present their research topic or question in about 120 characters. It went viral. Moreover, it was highly informative, entertaining, and instantly led to new connections and exchanges between researchers all over the world. Marc Smith made a beautiful graph of it. Continue reading
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