Return to search

Correlates of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Disorder of Extreme Stress Not Otherwise Specified among Palestinian Child Ex-Detainees

The objective of this study is to investigate the variations in the type of trauma (post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and disorder of extreme stress not otherwise specified (DESNOS) resulting first from group membership, and second from variations in socioeconomic status, and last, from exposure to physical and psychological methods of interrogation due to imprisonment. I use a diverse sample of 202 child ex-detainees who served sentences in Israeli prisons and were 17 years of age or less at the time of arrest. Various regression techniques were utilized to determine the most parsimonious way to distinguish between the three groups in their trauma responses. The key finding in this study is that child refugee ex-detainees living in refugee camps, in general, did not report PTSD or DESNOS reactions compared to their counterparts. Continuing PTSD and DESNOS symptoms were more prevalent among the group of refugees living outside the camps. However, there is at least one finding that supported what I hypothesized: refugees living in camps were more likely to experience elevated levels of alterations in attention or consciousness (DESNOS2). For refugees in camps, the DESNOS absence tells us that the volatile childhood these children experienced was not associated with severe pathological reactions or heightened sensitization to trauma. In contrast, refugees living outside camps suffer from alterations in self-perception DESNOS4 symptomology, in addition, to elevated levels of complex trauma DESNOS and they qualified for the DESNOS diagnosis more than the other two groups of children. Refugees living outside camps were the only group subjected to interpersonal stressors.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc84259
Date08 1900
CreatorsNabhan, Inshirah Nimer
ContributorsWilliamson, David Allen, Yeatts, Dale E., Lawson, Erma Jean, Yang, Philip Q., Sahliyeh, Emile, Sehwail, Mahmud
PublisherUniversity of North Texas
Source SetsUniversity of North Texas
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis or Dissertation
FormatText
RightsPublic, Nabhan, Inshirah Nimer, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.

Page generated in 0.0025 seconds