Pediatric Outpatient Settings Comparison of Parent and Child Reports of Emotional Trauma Symptoms in

ABSTRACT. Objective. Exposure to emotionally trau-matic events is common among children who are treatedin pediatric medical care settings, and it is important torecognize the emotional reactions that children mightdevelop as a response to the trauma. Practitioners some-times rely on parental reports of the child’s emotionalreactions, but these reports may be biased by the parent’sown posttraumatic symptoms. Understanding the differ-ences between parent and child reports of the child’semotional symptoms is essential to guide proper diagno-sis and care. This study evaluated discrepancies in pa-rental versus child reports of the child’s emotionaltrauma symptoms in pediatric medical care settings. Methods. We enrolled children and adolescents (age:8–19) who had not previously received a diagnosis of apsychiatric disorder and were treated in pediatric spe-cialty care clinics at Mount Sinai Medical Center in NewYork. We used the UCLA posttraumatic stress reactionindex, child, adolescent, and parent versions, to evaluatechild and parent reports of symptoms of posttraumaticstress disorder (PTSD) in the child. The Impact of EventScale was used to evaluate the parents’ own posttrau-matic symptoms. We conducted a “best estimate” psychi-atricdiagnosticproceduretodeterminewhetherthechildmet diagnostic criteria for PTSD and evaluated the asso-ciation between the diagnostic status (as determined bythe “best estimate” procedure) and the results of thequestionnaires.