Interventions should take into account the children’s background including their gender, age, where they live, and their socioeconomic status (e.g., family income, parents' educational level, family size) to alleviate the psychological symptoms and to enhance their resilience.Ī large number of children live in conditions of political violence, terrorist, and war situations worldwide ( 1). The strongest war trauma for PTSD is personal trauma followed by witnessing trauma and then observing demolition of properties.Ĭonclusions: The study provides valuable evidence that demographic and socioeconomic factors mediate the relationship between different war traumatic events and PTSD. Further, children who had experienced personal trauma, trauma to others, and the demolition of property were significantly more likely to be diagnosed with PTSD compared to those who had not, even when adjusting for demographic and socioeconomic factors. Results also demonstrated that the prevalence of DSM-V PTSD diagnosis was 53.5% ( N = 549). Compared to girls, boys showed significantly more exposure to all three event types as well as overall traumatic events. Results: The majority of children and adolescents experienced personal trauma ( N: 909 88.4%), witnessed trauma to others ( N: 861 83.7%) and observed demolition of property ( N: 908 88.3%) during the war. War-Traumatic Events Checklist (W-TECh) Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders Symptoms Scale (PTSDSS) were used. Methods: The sample consists of 1,029 school pupils (11–17 years old): 533 (51.8%) were female and 496 (48.2%) were male. The aims of the study are: To investigate the prevalence and nature of war traumatic events and PTSD and to investigate how these traumatic events predict PTSD when taking into account demographic and socioeconomic status factors amongst Palestinian children and adolescents in the Gaza Strip.

The prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among children and adolescents in the Gaza Strip increased after the recent wars. 2Department of Psychology, University of Surrey, Guildford, United Kingdomīackground: The situation in the Gaza Strip is uncommon in the frequency with which children are exposed to war-related traumatic events on a daily basis and because of the long-term nature of the conflict.

1Department of Psychology, Kingston University London, Kingston upon Thames, United Kingdom.

Basel El-Khodary 1 Muthanna Samara 1* Chris Askew 2

Intergenerational trauma palestine