Traumatic stress in children and parents: Coping with the PICU and CVICU

For a child and his/her parents, being admitted to the ICU means being exposed to many potentially traumatic events, which leave them vulnerable to a variety of short- and long-term negative behavioral and emotional consequences including Acute Stress Disorder (ASD). Currently, there have been no studies examining the development of ASD symptomology in children admitted to the ICU. The current study aimed to (a) address levels of ASD symptomology in children admitted to the ICU and in their parents, (b) to identify and compare particular environmental stressors in the ICU with levels of ASD symptoms in children and in parents, and (c) to explore the relationship between parent and child levels of ASD symptomology.;Twenty-six parent/child dyads were recruited from Stanford's Lucile Packard Children's Hospital's Pediatric Intensive Care Unit and Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit. Participants completed measures of overall acute stress symptoms (e.g. SASRQ and CASQ) and parental perceptions of certain PICU environmental stressors (e.g. PSS:PICU). The study found that stress tied to specific environmental stressors predicted both parental and child overall stress levels. Parent's exposure to stressors and overall levels of stress also predicted the child's levels of stress. Contrary to the literature, the study found that parental role constraints received limited support as a predictor of parents' overall levels of stress and no support for the child's overall levels of stress. Results suggest that reducing parental exposure to specific environmental stressors and/or inoculating them against the development of stress would result in reducing both parental and child overall stress.