Why and How Childhood PTSD Is Often Misdiagnosed

Why and How Childhood PTSD Is Often Misdiagnosed

by | Oct 22, 2015 | Different Dream, In Children, PTSD

Why and How Childhood PTSD Is Often Misdiagnosed

Thanks for stopping by to check out the eighth installment in this weekly series about childhood PTSD. Today, we’ll investigate why PTSD in children is frequently misdiagnosed. We’ll also talk about some of the most common misdiagnoses for PTSD in children, also known as childhood developmental trauma.

Have you ever taken your child to the doctor with a handful of vague elusive symptoms? Perhaps a stomach ache, a head ache, an on-and-off sore throat, or a rash that comes and goes. Making the right diagnosis depends on several different factors: your child’s ability to describe how he feels, whether or not the symptoms are presenting during the appointment, your own powers of observation and your ability to convey them to the doctor, the doctor’s skill level, the existence of an accurate lab test to confirm or eliminate a possible diagnosis.

Why Childhood PTSD Is Misdiagnosed

Many of the challenges a doctor faces in making an accurate diagnosis are similar to those faced when diagnosing mental illness. But because mental illness is harder to see than a rash, a broken bone, or a petri dish culture, the difficulties surrounding diagnosis may be magnified. With that in mind, here are some reasons childhood PTSD is often misdiagnosed.

Age of the child. Children traumatized between birth and age 3 don’t have words to describe what happened to them. Young children over 3 may not have enough expressive language to accurately relay events. They may not have the counting or sequencing skills to report how many times or in what order abuse occurred. These limitations also apply to older children with developmental delays.

Regression. Many children regress after a traumatic event. If the language skills of a child who had the vocabulary and ability to describe experiences before a traumatic event regresses, the child may not be able to do so afterward.

Memory problems. Children often push down or block traumatic memories when they try to resurface. Or they numb their emotional response to the memory and don’t act distressed on the outside.

Avoidance. Many children want to avoid bringing back frightening memories. So when a psychologist or mental health counselor asks questions about what happened, children give only brief, surface answers.

To read the rest of this post, go to Key Ministry’s blog, Church4EveryChild.

Part 1: Writing About PTSD Was Not on My Bucket List
Part 2: Childhood Trauma by Any Other Name Is Still Traumatic
Part 3: 10 Myths about PTSD in Children
Part 4: What Causes PTSD in Children
Part 5: A Look Inside the Brain’s Response to Childhood Trauma
Part 6: Why the Spotlight Is on PTSD in Children
Part 7: Childhood PTSD Symptoms in Tots, Teens, and In Between
Part 8: Why and How Childhood PTSD Is often Misdiagnosed
Part 9: Effective Treatment of PTSD in Children
Part 10: How to Prevent PTSD in Traumatized Children
Part 11: How Parents Can Advocate Effectively for Traumatized Children
Part 12: 4 Reasons Traumatized Kids Need Mentally Healthy Parents
Part 13: Clinging to Faith While Parenting Children with PTSD

Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the quarterly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email inbox. You can sign up for the first in the pop up box and the second at the bottom of this page.

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Jolene Philo is the author of the Different Dream series for parents of kids with special needs. She speaks at parenting and special needs conferences around the country. She’s also the creator and host of the Different Dream website. Sharing Love Abundantly With Special Needs Families: The 5 Love Languages® for Parents Raising Children with Disabilities, which she co-authored with Dr. Gary Chapman, was released in August of 2019 and is available at local bookstores, their bookstore website, and at Amazon.

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Childhood PTSD Symptoms in Tots, Teens, and In Between

Childhood PTSD Symptoms in Tots, Teens, and In Between

by | Oct 15, 2015 | Different Dream, In Children, PTSD

Childhood PTSD Symptoms in Tots, Teens, and In Between

Thank you for stopping by to check out the seventh installment in this weekly series about childhood PTSD. In this post, we’ll be looking at symptoms of PTSD in children from infancy through age 18. As you read, keep in mind that these symptoms are commonly seen in children shortly after a traumatic event. For most children, symptoms gradually fade as the trauma is processed and laid to rest. Therefore, a diagnosis of childhood PTSD is not made unless symptoms continue at least 3 months after the original trauma.

As you would expect, symptoms of childhood PTSD change as children mature. Behavioral clues and symptoms in a 2-year-old will be different from those of an 8-year-old, and the 8-year-old’s symptoms may be markedly different from those of a 17-year-old. Therefore, most therapists and mental health experts list symptoms of childhood PTSD in 4 age groups: birth to 3, 3 to 6, 7 to 12, and 13 to 18.

3 Categories of Childhood PTSD Symptoms

Furthermore, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5) which practitioners use to diagnose mental illness, organizes symptoms of PTSD in 3 categories: intrusive, arousal, and avoidant symptoms. Intrusive symptoms occur when something triggers an unwanted memory of a traumatic event. Arousal symptoms occur when something triggers the body to go into a state of high alert, also known as hyperarousal. Avoidant symptoms come after hyperarousal when the body responds naturally by trying to avoid a threat or pain. Now let’s look at how each category of symptoms is manifested by children within the 4 age groups mentioned earlier.

Symptoms of Childhood PTSD from Birth to 3

Many intrusive symptoms for children in this age group concern sleep patterns. Babies and toddlers may have a hard time falling asleep and experience nightmares once they fall asleep. They may respond violently to something that reminds them of the original trigger. For example, a 1-year-old who was bitten by a dog may become irrational at the sight of a dog  Traumatized children in this age group often have a tendency to startle easily, a common arousal symptom. Other arousal symptoms could be excessive fussiness, temper tantrums, severe separation anxiety, and digestive problems. Avoidant symptoms may include withdrawing, avoiding people associated with the trauma, extreme sadness, or a lack of any demonstration of emotion.

To read the rest of this post, go to Key Ministry’s blog, Church4EveryChild.

Part 1: Writing About PTSD Was Not on My Bucket List
Part 2: Childhood Trauma by Any Other Name Is Still Traumatic
Part 3: 10 Myths about PTSD in Children
Part 4: What Causes PTSD in Children
Part 5: A Look Inside the Brain’s Response to Childhood Trauma
Part 6: Why the Spotlight Is on PTSD in Children
Part 7: Childhood PTSD Symptoms in Tots, Teens, and In Between
Part 8: Why and How Childhood PTSD Is often Misdiagnosed
Part 9: Effective Treatment of PTSD in Children
Part 10: How to Prevent PTSD in Traumatized Children
Part 11: How Parents Can Advocate Effectively for Traumatized Children
Part 12: 4 Reasons Traumatized Kids Need Mentally Healthy Parents
Part 13: Clinging to Faith While Parenting Children with PTSD

Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the quarterly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email inbox. You can sign up for the first in the pop up box and the second at the bottom of this page.

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Jolene Philo is the author of the Different Dream series for parents of kids with special needs. She speaks at parenting and special needs conferences around the country. She’s also the creator and host of the Different Dream website. Sharing Love Abundantly With Special Needs Families: The 5 Love Languages® for Parents Raising Children with Disabilities, which she co-authored with Dr. Gary Chapman, was released in August of 2019 and is available at local bookstores, their bookstore website, and at Amazon.

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Why the Spotlight Is on PTSD in Children

Why the Spotlight Is on PTSD in Children

by | Oct 8, 2015 | Different Dream, In Children, PTSD

Why the Spotlight Is on PTSD in Children

Thank you for stopping by for the sixth post in a weekly series about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in children. Last week’s post discussed what happens when a person, child or adult, responds to a perceived threat. The Instinctual Trauma Response (ITR) model explained the seven responses the brain makes when a person goes through a traumatic event.

The ITR model made a great deal of sense to me when at age 26, our son was diagnosed with PTSD caused by frequent, invasive, and lifesaving medical treatment he experienced from birth to age 5. At the same time, the answers provided by the model led to several more questions. How do therapists know what goes on in the brain during trauma? How are successful treatment models developed? What had happened in the years between our son’s birth in 1982 and his treatment in 2008 that moved awareness of PTSD in children and adults from relative obscurity into the spotlight?

From Soldier’s Heart to PTSD

To answer those questions, I began to research to find out when PTSD was first identified as a mental illness. I discovered that thousands of years ago, an ancient Egyptian combat vet described the condition in his journal. Descriptions of it can also be found in medieval literature and by physicians in the 1600s and 1700s. PTSD is first mentioned in this country after the Civil War when it was called “soldier’s heart.” The condition is discussed and renamed in every subsequent American war through the 1950s. In 1952, it was called stress response syndrome in the first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-I). In 1982, DSM-III settled on the current terminology, post-traumatic stress disorder.

The Perfect Storm of Breakthroughs about PTSD in Children

As you can see, the field of adult onset PTSD has been around for years. But PTSD in children didn’t land in the spotlight until a series of events occurred in the 1980s and 1990s.

Breakthrough #1: These events began, strangely enough, in 1989 with the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. As countries fell, government orphanages was discovered. Families around the world were moved by the terrible conditions in the orphanages and rushed to adopt neglected infants, toddlers, and older children. Everyone involved believed that love would be enough to heal the ill effects of early neglect and that the children would thrive. In some cases, they did. But some children experienced a host of issues: developmental delays, language delays, behavioral issues, and an inability to bond with their new family members. Parents turned to mental health counselors, child psychiatrists, and child psychologists for help. This large influx of families seeking mental health care moved therapists to find answers for their clients.

To read the rest of this post, visit the Key Ministry blog, Church4EveryChild.

Part 1: Writing About PTSD Was Not on My Bucket List
Part 2: Childhood Trauma by Any Other Name Is Still Traumatic
Part 3: 10 Myths about PTSD in Children
Part 4: What Causes PTSD in Children
Part 5: A Look Inside the Brain’s Response to Childhood Trauma
Part 6: Why the Spotlight Is on PTSD in Children
Part 7: Childhood PTSD Symptoms in Tots, Teens, and In Between
Part 8: Why and How Childhood PTSD Is often Misdiagnosed
Part 9: Effective Treatment of PTSD in Children
Part 10: How to Prevent PTSD in Traumatized Children
Part 11: How Parents Can Advocate Effectively for Traumatized Children
Part 12: 4 Reasons Traumatized Kids Need Mentally Healthy Parents
Part 13: Clinging to Faith While Parenting Children with PTSD

Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the quarterly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email inbox. You can sign up for the first in the pop up box and the second at the bottom of this page.

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Jolene Philo is the author of the Different Dream series for parents of kids with special needs. She speaks at parenting and special needs conferences around the country. She’s also the creator and host of the Different Dream website. Sharing Love Abundantly With Special Needs Families: The 5 Love Languages® for Parents Raising Children with Disabilities, which she co-authored with Dr. Gary Chapman, was released in August of 2019 and is available at local bookstores, their bookstore website, and at Amazon.

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A Look Inside: The Brain’s Response to Childhood Trauma

A Look Inside: The Brain’s Response to Childhood Trauma

by | Oct 1, 2015 | Different Dream, In Children, PTSD

A Look Inside: The Brain’s Response to Childhood Trauma

Welcome to the fifth post in an ongoing series about childhood trauma and PTSD. So far, the series has explained why I write about PTSD in children, what words like childhood developmental trauma and PTSD mean, myths about this mental illness, and what causes childhood trauma.

The Instinctual Trauma Response (ITR) Model

Today’s post takes a look at how the brain responds to perceived danger. Many models exist about the brain’s instinctive response to threat. The one that makes the most sense to me–and I hope will make sense to you, too–is called the Instinctual Trauma Response (ITR) model. It was developed by Dr. Louis Tinnin and Linda Gantt, the founders of Intensive Trauma Therapy, Inc. (ITT) in Morgantown, West Virginia.

ITR’s Seven Stages

In the 1990s Tinnin and Gantt identified a consistent pattern of response to threatening events. The pattern is common in both children and adults and consists of seven stages. Here is a brief look at each stage.

Startle: A quick, intense response which puts the body on high alert.

Thwarted intention: After the initial startle, the body releases a surge of hormones to prepare for fight or flight. When fight or flight aren’t possible, the thwarted intention response kicks in.

Freeze: The body enters a frozen state of numbness and immobility, at least for a moment or two, when intentions are thwarted and there is no hope of escape.

Altered state of consciousness: If the freeze state lasts for more than a few moments, many people enter an altered state of consciousness. Adults often describe this state as watching a movie of themselves or that they feel themselves shrink deep inside their bodies and their bodies seem to become shells.

Body sensations: A variety of sensations, such as pain, can be experienced during different stages in the ITR model. All of the sensations are stored as non-verbal memories (in both children and adults) and are stored in the right brain. They remain there as non-verbal memories—bodily sensations that can’t be put it into words.

Automatic obedience: This instinctual response causes a threatened person to automatically obey a perpetrator’s demands in order to survive the immediate threat.

Self-repair: After the threat passes, a person tends to the emotional and physical wounds of trauma. Sleeping, eating, rocking, going to a quiet place, and washing are all forms of self-repair.

To read the rest of this post, please visit Key Ministry’s blog, Church4EveryChild.

Part 1: Writing About PTSD Was Not on My Bucket List
Part 2: Childhood Trauma by Any Other Name Is Still Traumatic
Part 3: 10 Myths about PTSD in Children
Part 4: What Causes PTSD in Children
Part 5: A Look Inside the Brain’s Response to Childhood Trauma
Part 6: Why the Spotlight Is on PTSD in Children
Part 7: Childhood PTSD Symptoms in Tots, Teens, and In Between
Part 8: Why and How Childhood PTSD Is often Misdiagnosed
Part 9: Effective Treatment of PTSD in Children
Part 10: How to Prevent PTSD in Traumatized Children
Part 11: How Parents Can Advocate Effectively for Traumatized Children
Part 12: 4 Reasons Traumatized Kids Need Mentally Healthy Parents
Part 13: Clinging to Faith While Parenting Children with PTSD

Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the quarterly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email inbox. You can sign up for the first in the pop up box and the second at the bottom of this page.

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Jolene Philo is the author of the Different Dream series for parents of kids with special needs. She speaks at parenting and special needs conferences around the country. She’s also the creator and host of the Different Dream website. Sharing Love Abundantly With Special Needs Families: The 5 Love Languages® for Parents Raising Children with Disabilities, which she co-authored with Dr. Gary Chapman, was released in August of 2019 and is available at local bookstores, their bookstore website, and at Amazon.

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What Causes PTSD in Children?

What Causes PTSD in Children?

by | Sep 24, 2015 | Different Dream, In Children, PTSD

What Causes PTSD in Children?

When adults think about what causes PTSD in children, most have an easy time coming up with a short list. Physical, sexual, and verbal abuse make the list. So do natural disasters like tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes. Unexpected events like car accidents and fires usually make the list. Most people add violent events such as war, terrorist attacks, and kidnapping. Neglect, hunger, homelessness, and poverty and other environments of deprivation may be included.

Adults think of those items because they can be traumatic to anyone of any age. However, many other situations or events that adults consider to be benign can cause PTSD in children. The reason goes back to the definition of trauma discussed in part two of this series. That post said childhood trauma springs from the scary, painful, and yucky bits of childhood.

Causes of PTSD in Children

When we think of what causes PTSD in children, it’s essential to view life events through child-colored glasses. Those glasses make us small and powerless. At the same time, the adults in our lives become large and all-powerful. From that vantage point, the list of what can be scary, painful, and yucky grows quickly and looks something like this.

  • Physical, sexual, or emotional abuse
  • Observing a loved one being abused
  • Becoming a victim of bullying
  • Witnessing violence at home, at school, or in the community
  • Watching media accounts of traumatic events
  • Experiencing a devastating illness or death
  • Undergoing frequent family moves or repeated foster care placements
  • Experiencing homelessness
  • Poverty and racism
  • Surviving car or plane accidents
  • Experiencing falls or athletic injuries
  • Living through earthquakes, floods, severe storms, fires, or other natural disasters
  • Witnessing war or terrorism
  • Living as a war refugee
  • Experiencing medical trauma
  • Adoption
  • Moving
  • Divorce

To read the rest of this post, please visit Key Ministry’s blog, Church4EveryChild.

Part 1: Writing About PTSD Was Not on My Bucket List
Part 2: Childhood Trauma by Any Other Name Is Still Traumatic
Part 3: 10 Myths about PTSD in Children
Part 4: What Causes PTSD in Children
Part 5: A Look Inside the Brain’s Response to Childhood Trauma
Part 6: Why the Spotlight Is on PTSD in Children
Part 7: Childhood PTSD Symptoms in Tots, Teens, and In Between
Part 8: Why and How Childhood PTSD Is often Misdiagnosed
Part 9: Effective Treatment of PTSD in Children
Part 10: How to Prevent PTSD in Traumatized Children
Part 11: How Parents Can Advocate Effectively for Traumatized Children
Part 12: 4 Reasons Traumatized Kids Need Mentally Healthy Parents
Part 13: Clinging to Faith While Parenting Children with PTSD

Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the quarterly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email inbox. You can sign up for the first in the pop up box and the second at the bottom of this page.

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Jolene Philo is the author of the Different Dream series for parents of kids with special needs. She speaks at parenting and special needs conferences around the country. She’s also the creator and host of the Different Dream website. Sharing Love Abundantly With Special Needs Families: The 5 Love Languages® for Parents Raising Children with Disabilities, which she co-authored with Dr. Gary Chapman, was released in August of 2019 and is available at local bookstores, their bookstore website, and at Amazon.

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10 Myths about PTSD in Children

10 Myths about PTSD in Children

by | Sep 17, 2015 | Different Dream, In Children, PTSD

10 Myths about PTSD in Children

Thank you for stopping by for the third installment in the series about PTSD in children, also known as childhood developmental trauma. Part 2 in the series provided definitions of trauma, PTSD, and childhood developmental trauma. With that basic understanding of what PTSD in children is, this post looks at what childhood trauma is not by providing a brief look at 10 common myths surrounding PTSD in children.

Myth #1: Only Soldiers Get PTSD

This is probably the most common myth about PTSD in children. But this statement can only be true if war alone causes trauma and if only soldiers are traumatized by war. But since many other events cause trauma and because many civilians living in war zones are traumatized, this myth is obviously untrue.

Myth #2: It’s Not PTSD: It’s Bad Parenting

Kids with PTSD often behave as though they were poorly parented. And parental neglect or abuse can cause PTSD in children. So we tend generalize and pin the blame for behaviors on parents. But sometimes only one sibling raised in a secure, loving, and nurturing home exhibits disturbing behaviors. This scenario reminds us that while pinning the blame on parents is easy and convenient, doing so perpetuates another myth about PTSD in children.

Myth #3: It’s Not PTSD: It’s Willful Disobedience

Like the second myth, this one is based upon pinning the blame on someone–in this case on the child. Once again, the behaviors of kids with PTSD look a lot like willful disobedience or naughtiness. But traumatized children are not deliberately choosing to be naughty. Their behavior is an automatic survival response to something in their environment that triggers a traumatic memory. When that happens, they do whatever it takes to get away from whatever triggered their fear.

Myth #4: It’s Not PTSD: It’s Sin

This myth adds a faith-based spin to the previous one. PTSD behaviors look a lot like willful sin behaviors. But children with PTSD are not deliberately choosing to sin. As was mentioned before, their response is not a rational choice, but an irrational fear response to a perceived threat.

Myth #5: Kids Don’t Remember What Happened When They Were Babies

In fact children, and adults for that matter, do remember what happened when they were babies. But they remember pre-verbal events, from birth to about age 3, as implicit rather than as explicit memories. Implicit memories are stored as emotions, bodily sensations, behaviors, and perceptual interpretations. Explicit memory is what most people think of as memory. Explicit memories, the episodic movies of our lives, begin to kick in around age 2.  But implicit memories–both good and bad–are present from birth and help build the foundation of a person’s sense of security…or lack of it.

To read the rest of this post about PTSD in children, visit the Church4EveryChild blog.

Part 1: Writing About PTSD Was Not on My Bucket List
Part 2: Childhood Trauma by Any Other Name Is Still Traumatic
Part 3: 10 Myths about PTSD in Children
Part 4: What Causes PTSD in Children
Part 5: A Look Inside the Brain’s Response to Childhood Trauma
Part 6: Why the Spotlight Is on PTSD in Children
Part 7: Childhood PTSD Symptoms in Tots, Teens, and In Between
Part 8: Why and How Childhood PTSD Is often Misdiagnosed
Part 9: Effective Treatment of PTSD in Children
Part 10: How to Prevent PTSD in Traumatized Children
Part 11: How Parents Can Advocate Effectively for Traumatized Children
Part 12: 4 Reasons Traumatized Kids Need Mentally Healthy Parents
Part 13: Clinging to Faith While Parenting Children with PTSD

Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the quarterly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email inbox. You can sign up for the first in the pop up box and the second at the bottom of this page.

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Jolene Philo is the author of the Different Dream series for parents of kids with special needs. She speaks at parenting and special needs conferences around the country. She’s also the creator and host of the Different Dream website. Sharing Love Abundantly With Special Needs Families: The 5 Love Languages® for Parents Raising Children with Disabilities, which she co-authored with Dr. Gary Chapman, was released in August of 2019 and is available at local bookstores, their bookstore website, and at Amazon.

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