Teacher-mediated intervention after disaster: a controlled three-year follow-up of children's functioning

• Published in: Journal of child psychology and psychiatry Vol. 46; no. 11; pp. 1161 - 1168
• Main Authors: Wolmer, Leo, Laor, Nathaniel, Dedeoglu, Ceyda, Siev, Joanna, Yazgan, Yanki
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing 01.11.2005; Wiley-Blackwell; Blackwell; Blackwell Publishing Ltd
• Subjects: adaptation; Adaptation, Psychological; Adolescent; Biological and medical sciences; Case-Control Studies; Child; Child psychology; Children; Comparative Analysis; Control Groups; Coping; Demography; disaster; Disasters; Earthquakes; Experimental Groups; Faculty; Female; Follow-Up Studies; Followup Studies; Foreign Countries; Grief; Humans; Intervention; Interventions; Male; Medical sciences; Mental Health; Mental Health Services; Natural Disasters; Outcomes of Treatment; Post traumatic stress disorder; Posttraumatic Stress Disorder; Prevention. Health policy. Planification; Program Effectiveness; Psychological trauma; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Risk Factors; School Health Services; school intervention; Single-Blind Method; Social Behavior; Social psychiatry. Ethnopsychiatry; Social Support; Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic - etiology; Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic - prevention & control; Survivors; Symptoms (Individual Disorders); Teachers; Trauma; Treatment Outcome; Turkey; Turkey; Asia; Human; Posttraumatic syndrome; Survivor; Anxiety disorder; Mental health; Teacher; adaptation; Operation; Trauma; Stress; disaster; Prevention; Efficiency; Follow up study; Earthquakes; school intervention; Early; children trauma; Child; Public health
• ISSN: 0021-9630; 1469-7610
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-7610.2005.00416.x

Background:  Child survivors of a catastrophic earthquake in Turkey were evaluated three and a half years after the event, and three years after a sub‐group participated in a teacher‐mediated intervention developed by the authors. The goal of this follow‐up study was to determine the long‐term effectiveness of the original intervention. Methods:  Subjects who participated in the intervention were compared with a control group of children similar in terms of demographics, risk and exposure. All children were evaluated in terms of posttraumatic, grief and dissociative symptomatology, as well as adaptive functioning (academic performance, social behavior and general conduct). Results:  The severity of post‐traumatic, grief and dissociative symptoms of the two groups was comparable. Teachers blind to group assignment rated participating children significantly higher than the control group in terms of adaptive functioning. Conclusions:  Early post‐disaster intervention addressing children and their educational milieu provides children with significant symptomatic reduction, allowing the mobilization of adaptive coping, thereby enhancing their overall functioning as observed in school.