Trauma and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder in Therapeutic Day School Students: Prevalence in this Population and Effective Treatment Programs

<p>This survey-based, comparative study investigated the percentage of students at a suburban Chicago therapeutic day school who meet criteria for clinically significant levels of PTSD as compared to students in a general education setting. The directional hypothesis was that students placed at therapeutic day schools have a higher prevalence of PTSD than a general population of students. The method used was a survey assessment called the Child PTSD Symptom Scale (CPSS) given to 16 students at a suburban Chicago therapeutic day school. These CPSS scores were analyzed and statistically compared to CPSS scores of an already published study with students in a regular education private school who had experienced a community-wide traumatic event. Data was compared using tables, bar graphs, and the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test. This study's results showed that the CPSS scores of therapeutic day school students were significantly higher than those of the students in a regular education school who had recently experienced a community-wide traumatic event.</p> <p>Individual student data for all of the participants was also depicted using line graphs to show the variability in student data and their total CPSS scores. The principal conclusion was that the therapeutic day school students who participated in this study had significantly higher levels of PTSD than students in a regular education school who had experienced a community-wide earthquake. There is a need for more studies on therapeutic day school populations to focus on PTSD interventions and programs that could be implemented in therapeutic day schools. Two suggested interventions/programs in this study are the CBITS program and EMDR.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Ed.D. Doctor of Education

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation - Public Access

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Educational Psychology

Year dc:date.available

2013

Author dc:creator

• Roberts, Monica

Contributors dc:contributor

• Dr. Mary Frances Schneider
• Dr. Diane Salmon
• Dr. Elizabeth Grace

• trauma
• PTSD
• therapeutic
• day
• school
• students
• Child Psychology
• Clinical Psychology
• Counseling Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Education
• Educational Psychology
• Psychology
• School Psychology

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.nl.edu/diss/143

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.nl.edu:diss-1147