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What is it?

Children, like adults, sometimes experience or witness something extremely frightening and dangerous. If this traumatic experience was so bad that the child was in danger of being killed or seriously injured, they may have felt terrified, horrified and helpless. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may follow a dreadful experience of this sort.

What age range does it affect?

Any

Symptoms

• Feeling there’s no point in planning the future
• Panic response to anything to do with the accident
• Bad dreams, difficulty in sleeping, bedwetting
• Feeling detached from others or from themselves
• Being irritable or disobedient – out of character for the individual
• Experience flashbacks – for a few moments it feels like you are re-living the event in your mind
• Being easily startled
• Deliberately avoiding thoughts or feelings about it (e.g. if in a road accident the sufferer might avoid roads or anything to do with cars for fear of being reminded of the event)
• Repressing memories to the extent that the person cannot remember parts of the event

Regular Causes

• Personal trauma
• Violent crime against the person
• Sexual or physical assault or abuse (whether one or more instaces)
• Road traffic accidents
   

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