Post-traumatic stress disorder in children and adolescents of the Armenian earthquake.

The impact of the Armenian earthquake of 1988 on children and adolescents screened through the National Mental Health Research Center in Spitak, Armenia, is discussed. The earthquake caused close to 20,000 deaths, almost two-thirds of which were children and adolescents. Clinical data which address advances in understanding the diagnostic indicators and resulting psychopathology in victims of the Armenian earthquake are presented. Current theory about the processing of trauma in children and adolescents is reviewed, with recommendations for future research in this area.

Assessment of life stress events: the etiology and measurement of traumatic stress disorder.

The impact of stressful life events on health has been of considerable interest from a cross-cultural perspective. Examined herein is the etiology and onset of post-traumatic stress disorder with careful review of the diagnostic criteria, current measures used and clinical dimensions of PTSD. Also examined from a cross-cultural perspective is how psychological trauma may be processed by victims of trauma and subsequent approaches both pharmacological and psychotherapeutic to the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder.

[Mental disorders after amputation of the extremities]. / Psikhicheskie narusheniia pri amputatsiiakh konechnostei.

Analysis of the dynamics of the disorders has shown that in the acute period following trauma, the patients' status was "abnormal personality in nature, being determined by affective and shock reaction in the hyperkinetic and hypokinetic forms. The subacute period was characterized by the predominance of posttraumatic stress disorders (PTSD), whereas the long-term posttraumatic period by personality disorders pertaining to the asthenic (type I) and asthenic (type II) sphere. The clinical characteristics of type I patients was determined by a range of asthenic, psychasthenic, autistic, sensitive, subdepressive, and hystero-conversion disorders, whereas from the clinicopsychological standpoint, by a high level of somatization, anxiety, depressive disorders, with the aggressiveness level corresponding with normal. It has been established that social rehabilitation of such patients requires measures aimed at an increase of the activity and improvement of communicative functions. Hypoparanoic, excitable and ++hystero-histrionic disorders were common to type II cases. Clinical and psychological examinations have revealed a high level of aggressiveness and anxiety, depressive disorders; somatization was found to be within normal. Social rehabilitation of such patients is to be reduced to a great measure to the correction of deformed personality lines.

[Mental disturbances in the victims of the earthquake in Armenia (based on examination data in the medical institutions of Moscow)]. / Psikhicheskie rasstroistva u postradavshikh pri zemletriasenii v Armenii (po dannym obsledovaniia v meditsinskikh uchrezhdeniiakh Moskvy).

As a result of examining 211 persons with severe somatic pathology (the crush syndrome, multiple fractures, spinal cord injuries, and so forth) received during the earthquake, 179 (84.8%) manifested psychopathological disorders. Of these, 70 persons (33.2%) had asthenia, consciousness disturbances, insomnia which were viewed as somatogenic, 17 persons (8.1%) with craniocerebral injury had the signs of the establishment of the psycho-organic syndrome, and in 109 persons (51%), the clinical picture was determined by psychogenically conditioned depressive, anxious-phobic and psychopathic reactions. The data obtained allow one to judge the characteristics of the mental status during the subacute period (from the first to the second week) after the earthquake.