Parental Adjustment, Family Functioning, and Posttraumatic Growth Among Norwegian Children and Adolescents Following a Natural Disaster

• Published in: American journal of orthopsychiatry Vol. 80; no. 2; pp. 248 - 257
• Main Authors: Hafstad, Gertrud S., Gil-Rivas, Virginia, Kilmer, Ryan P., Raeder, Sabine
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.04.2010; Blackwell Publishing Ltd; Wiley; Educational Publishing Foundation; American Psychological Association
• Subjects: Adaptation, Psychological; Adjustment; Adolescent; Adolescent Development; Adolescents; Adult; Biological and medical sciences; Child; Child Development; Childhood Development; Children; Children & youth; coping; Disasters; Family environment; Family environment. Family history; Family Relations; Female; Human; Humans; Impact analysis; longitudinal; Male; Medical sciences; Middle Aged; multilevel modeling; natural disaster; Natural Disasters; Norway; Parent Child Relations; parental distress; Parents; Parents & parenting; Parents - psychology; Post traumatic stress disorder; Posttraumatic Growth; post‐traumatic growth; Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Sick Leave; social context; Social Development; Social psychiatry. Ethnopsychiatry; Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic - complications; Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic - diagnosis; Survival strategy; Survivors; Thailand; Tidal waves; Time Factors; Trauma; tsunami; Tsunamis; Wounds and Injuries - complications; Wounds and Injuries - psychology; Youth; Thailand; Asia; Norway; Europe; trauma; tsunami; multilevel modeling; post-traumatic growth; natural disaster; children; parental distress; family environment; longitudinal; Thailand; social context; coping; Social environment; Parental behavior; Mental health; Family environment; Coping; Child; Public health; Human; Post-traumatic growth; Family study; Parent pathology; Tsunami; Trauma; Symptomatology; School age; Social interaction; Psychological distress; Follow up study; Adolescent; Familial relation; Predictive factor
• ISSN: 0002-9432; 1939-0025
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1939-0025.2010.01028.x

This study investigated the degree to which parental symptomatology and characteristics of the family environment related to posttraumatic growth (PTG) among children and adolescents who had been directly exposed to the 2004 tsunami in Thailand. One hundred five 6- to 17-year-olds (M = 11.9 years, SD = 3.3) and their parents (N = 67) were interviewed approximately 10 months and 2 years 5 months after the tsunami. The parents' self-reported PTG was a significant predictor of PTG in their children, suggesting that social processes play a role in the development of PTG in youth. Parental self-reported posttraumatic stress symptoms did not predict PTG in their children nor did youth's ratings of family cohesion, but parental tsunami-related sick leave related to lower levels of PTG reported by their children. Overall, these findings imply that elements of parents' functioning can affect children's positive adaptation after a disaster and highlight the need to assess potential parental influences and those of other sources of support in the child's environment after trauma. Attending to such factors holds salience for efforts to promote adaptation and facilitate PTG.