Twenty-year follow-up of adults traumatized during childhood in Armenia

Abstract

Most children who experience trauma recover and display resilience; however, there are few long-term follow-up studies of traumatized children and fewer still have examined factors that may lead to resilience. This study is a 20-year follow-up of adults who experienced an earthquake as children. Nineteen of 25 adults who experienced the earthquake in Armenia in 1988 and participated in the initial study approximately two years later (Time 1) were reinterviewed in 2008 (Time 2). Forty-four Armenian adults aged 22-37 who had not experienced the earthquake comprised the comparison group. All participants at Time 2 were administered the Symptom Checklist-90 Revised (SCL-90-R) and the UCLA PTSD Reaction Index (RI) and also received a clinical interview. The earthquake group had clinically elevated SCL-90-R GSI, PSDI, PST and subscale scores for all but one subscale and had significantly more subscale clinical elevations than the comparison group. All earthquake survivors at Time 2 scored from 1 to 46 on the RI with 4 having probable PTSD. No comparison subjects had experienced an A1 trauma. The small number of subjects in this follow-up, our inability to follow the comparison group in the original study and the measures used at the two time points limits the applicability of the results. Most of the earthquake survivors experienced anxiety disorders at follow-up but not high levels of PTSD or depression. Clinical interviews identified resilient factors that may have helped these subjects maintain functional and adaptive capacities despite clinical elevations on the SCL-90.