Psychosocial vulnerability and potential posttraumatic symptoms formation in adolescents in peacetime and during warfare

Abstract

The article presents the main results of a trauma survey conducted with two comparable samples of adolescents (age range 11-17 years). One of the samples (N=172) were children surveyed in Croatia during warfare (’95 survey), and the other was consisted of children (N=282) attending elementary schools at Pécs and surrounding cities. Both groups were investigated by the same self-administered questionnaire for reporting traumatic life events in own life, and for self-assessment of mental well-being in the past two weeks in a series of symptom scales (PTSD-12 Questionnaire, Baráth 1996). The results unequivocally revealed the fact that in both samples one can find a fair number of children with high scoring vulnerability (prevalence rates 20% in Hungarian, and 37% in Croatian sample), in sprite of the fact that Hungarian adolescents reported far less traumatic events in their lives than the children during the war in Croatia.