PMID: 9167500Jun 1, 1997Paper

Children's thinking in the wake of Challenger

The American Journal of Psychiatry
L C TerrS Metayer

Abstract

The Challenger spacecraft explosion in 1986 offered an opportunity to study the thinking of normal children after a sudden and distant disaster, differences in thinking among children of different levels of emotional concern and different ages, and changes in their thinking over time. The authors studied six thinking patterns known to characterize childhood posttraumatic stress disorder and four additional hypothesized patterns in 153 randomly selected children of Concord, N.H. (who watched the explosion on television) and Porterville, Calif. (who heard about it later). They compared the structured-interview responses of the more involved (East Coast) and less involved (West Coast) children, of the latency-age children and the adolescents, and of the children initially (5-7 weeks after the explosion) and 14 months later. The children exhibited the 10 predictable thinking patterns. They initially defended themselves, denying the reality of the explosion. They later fantasized about it. They tried to cope by seeking additional information on their own, at home, and at school. Most children talked about Challenger, but a minority of the latency-age youngsters avoided related talk and thoughts. The adolescents experienced more para...Continue Reading

Citations

Jun 10, 2004·Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry·Wanda P Fremont
Nov 24, 2004·The American Journal of Orthopsychiatry·Deborah PhillipsLaura Schiebelhut
Jun 7, 2005·Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America·Wanda P FremontEugene V Beresin
Jan 16, 2004·Psychological Reports·Michael A ThalbourneSusan E Crawley
Mar 20, 2004·Scandinavian Journal of Psychology·Atle DyregrovIngvar Holmberg
Sep 30, 2004·Prehospital and Disaster Medicine·Sally Wooding, Beverley Raphael
Jan 1, 2009·The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child·Lenore C Terr

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