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Assessment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

How to Figure Out if Someone Has the Disease

May 3, 2009 Naheed Ali

For those who wondering whether they should inquire about post-traumatic stress disorder by their clinical or mental-health professional, self-tests are useful.

The National Institute of Mental Health offers a self-assessment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder could be difficult for health professionals to make because victims often come to the doctor's office complaining of problems and issues other than anxiety connected with a traumatic incident.

What to Look for in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

The problems and issues associated with PTSD tend to involve depression, somatization (when mental stresses become physical), or illicit substance abuse. Patients with PTSD may tell of a personal history of suicide attempts.

In addition to depression and illicit substance abuse disorders, the assessment of post-traumatic stress disorder often co-occurs (is comorbid) with bipolar illness (manic depression), eating problems, and other anxiety problems such as obsessive compulsive disorder, panic issues, and generalized anxiety disorder.

The majority of health professionals who examine a teenager or child for post-traumatic stress disorder are likely to interview both the parent and the teenager. This is most often done separately, to allow for each party to comment freely.

Interviewing a teenager in addition to the adult is quite significant, given that the teenager’s or child’s parent or guardian will have a unique perspective. There can be things the young individual may be feeling of which the mother or father is completely unaware.

Assessment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Children

An obstacle in diagnosing post-traumatic stress disorder in kids, is that small children will express their problems and issues differently from adults. For instance, they might go backwards or regress as part of their development, become accident-prone, engage mostly in risky behaviors, or fall victim to more physical injuries. These characteristics are rarely seen in grownups with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Traumatized youngsters may also experience trouble when trying to sit still, focusing, and managing their impulses and therefore are occasionally misdiagnosed as having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Professionals are likely to use either a comprehensive or partial psychiatric interview for PTSD when evaluating kids for the disorder.

Examples of such tools used in assessing PTSD are:

The Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School Age Children (K-SADS)
Diagnostic Interview for Children and Adolescents-Revised (DICA-R), (DISC-IV)
Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children-Version IV.

There are also a few PTSD-specific comprehensive interviews, like:

Clinician-Administered Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Scale - Child and Adolescent Version
Child Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Checklist
Child Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Symptom Scale.

For determining the magnitude of Post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms and signs in youngsters, comprehensive interviews such as:

Child Post-traumatic mental stress Reaction Index,
Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children
Child and Adolescent Trauma Survey.

The adolescents' Trauma Screening Questionnaire has been demonstrated by a few professionals to be useful in determining which children who endure a traumatic disaster are eventually going to suffer from PTSD.