Conceptualizing Trauma for Children of Drug Addicted Mothers: A Developmental Mapping

Lombard S,Pullen D,J F,Swabey K

doi:10.4172/2167-1222.1000352

Abstract

Children of drug addicted mothers are exposed to highly stressful experiences and experience high levels of psychological and emotional distress, alongside psychiatric nosology with multiple comorbid symptoms. The following study extends the work of Lombard, et al. classify the consequences of prolonged or ongoing trauma of children of addicted mothers using lifespan domains. Children of addicted mothers are often exposed to severe and ongoing events of trauma, or environments that are not conducive to adequate development, resulting in a complex array of comorbid and compounding physical and psychological problems. Results showed that the prevalence of trauma experienced by children were categorized as being from social and physical domains, with the emotional domain (reported neglect=26) also being high. These experiences resulted predominantly in behavioral problems and emotional problems. The most salient problems included a child who reported hearing the devil speak to them in an ongoing manner, two children reporting attempted homicides on siblings, and three children reporting hurting animals. Further research in capturing and detailing the extent of the trauma experienced and the resulting lifespan domain problems is necessary.

Highlights

Children of drug addicted parents experience ongoing and multiple levels and forms of trauma [1,2] and these damaging experiences lead to several psychological problems and psychiatric nosology along with comorbid symptomologies [3,4,5,6,7,8]
This paper extends the findings of Lombard, et al [1] to capture the implication of prolonged traumatic experiences among children of addicted mothers using lifespan domains
This study confirmed that conceptualizing the effects of experiencing trauma in terms of children of addicted mothers is difficult and complex, to the extent that children experienced a variety of problems

Summary

Introduction

Children of drug addicted parents experience ongoing and multiple levels and forms of trauma [1,2] and these damaging experiences lead to several psychological problems and psychiatric nosology along with comorbid symptomologies [3,4,5,6,7,8]. Regular and ongoing exposure to trauma is likely to have a significantly negative impact on the development of children (i.e. social, emotional, cognitive physical) at all levels of their lifespan [3,4,9,10]. Trauma can be the result of several negative experiences such as sexual abuse or exposure to domestic violence but the experiences of children of addicted parents are likely to be far more traumatic, as these harmful experiences are likely to be ongoing leading to a complex array of problems and behaviours [4,5,8,11,12,13]. Irrespective of the kind of trauma experienced, children of addicted mothers are exposed to detrimental negative experiences and are more likely to have significant ongoing social, emotional, physical and cognitive problems as a result of continuing This study captures the trauma and its implications among addicted mothers, by classifying these experiences under specific lifespan domains

Methods

Discussion