In a national study of children in motor vehicle crashes, researchers at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia report that traumatic stress can occur without injury. Looking at a wide range of crashes reported to State Farm Insurance Companies, researchers found that while most children did well, two percent of the children and five percent of their parents experienced multiple traumatic stress symptoms that disrupted their lives.

There are more than 1.5 million crashes involving children in the U.S. annually, suggesting that more than 25,000 children each year may require help in coping with reactions to a crash. Researchers urge clinicians to screen children and their parents after any crash experience.

"Until now, research on traumatic stress after crashes had only examined patient populations in hospitals or clinics," said Dr. Flaura Winston, M.D., Ph.D., a pediatrician at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and lead author on the study. "In this study, we found that, although it's less common, traumatic stress can occur in children and their parents even if a child wasn't injured in the crash." Dr Winston is also co-Director and a principal investigator on the Partners for Child Passenger Safety study.

The study, published in this month's Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, examined 1,091 crashes reported to State Farm that occurred in 15 states and Washington, D.C., involving 1,483 child occupants between the ages of five and 15, as part of Partners for Child Passenger Safety, an ongoing research collaboration between the Children's Hospital and State Farm. While traumatic stress symptoms were seen in children and their parents regardless of injury, if a child received medical care after the crash, both the child and their parents were four times more likely to have serious acute stress symptoms than when no medical attention was required.

Symptoms of acute stress disorder (ASD) can include frequent or upsett
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Contact: Dana Mortensen
Mortensen@email.chop.edu
267-426-6092
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
7-Nov-2005

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