Assessing Trauma-Related Symptoms in Children and Adolescents

Abstract

If left untreated, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can become chronic and significantly impact child and family functioning and general well-being. The first step to treating PTSD is to provide an assessment. This chapter provides an update on the evidence base for key measures for child and adolescent PTSD, including brief screening tools, symptom checklists, and diagnostic interviews. There is also a section specific to the more recently proposed preschool PTSD. Many of these tools are freely available, providing practitioners and services with relatively easily accessible evidence-based tools to best understand whether a young person may be experiencing elevated PTSD symptoms, ultimately informing the treatment approach to these young people.