Abstract
This study examined the narratives of ten Caucasian mothers whose children had been impacted by ‘traumatic’ events and referred to a specialist trauma service in N. Ireland. The research question was whether the PTSD construct adequately represented the broad ‘lived’ experience of the impact of trauma on survivors’ wellbeing and their family relationships as articulated by mothers post trauma. Narrative Interviewing methodology was employed and the resulting data inductively organised into an evolving thematic framework. A quantitative analysis of the prevalence of particular themes is presented supplemented by qualitative quotations to illustrate the complexity of reported impact. The major components of the mothers’ narratives included family and relational distress (35.7%), non-pathological individual distress (24.4%), resilience (16.7%) and a prior history of adversity (16.6%). Prior history of adversity was resent in 8 out the 10 cases including a high level of suicide. PTSD symptomatology constituted a small proportion of the narratives (6.6%) and this suggests that the PTSD construct does not adequately represent the broad ‘lived’ experience of the impact of trauma. Although a small and heterogeneous study sample, the findings are sufficiently robust to suggest further investigation is required to understand the phenomenological experience of trauma of child victims/survivors and their families.
Highlights
It has been argued that the experience of trauma has been over-medicalised and reduced to a relatively narrow set of ‘symptoms’ associated with the diagnostic category posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
The traumatic events which precipitated the referral for therapeutic support included physical assault on a young person/family member; sexual assault on a young person; witnessed attack/threat with firearm on family member; sibling suicide; young person overdose and self harm in the context of previous family member suicide
In addition to the high frequency of reported suicide in this study, a number of mothers spoke of the experience of domestic violence, often witnessed by the children and reported as only one of a series of adverse events. The results of this pilot study support the first author’s clinical experience that PTSD symptoms are very much a minority theme (6.6% of total content) in mothers’ spontaneous narratives of trauma impact and they co-exist among a wide variety of responses spanning both negative and positive effects at an individual and relational level. This suggests that PTSD symptoms alone do not represent the full complexity of the phenomenological experience or concerns about the impact of traumatic events on survivors and their families articulated by mothers post trauma
Summary
It has been argued that the experience of trauma has been over-medicalised and reduced to a relatively narrow set of ‘symptoms’ associated with the diagnostic category posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (van der Kolk 2002; Kleinman 2006). The site for the study was a regional trauma treatment centre in Northern Ireland, which receives referrals for children and young people under the age of 18 years affected by a wide range of traumatic events. The authors are both qualified Social Workers and Systemic
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