Prevalence of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Associated Factors in Children with Experience of Traffic Accident in Tehran

Introduction: Iran is one of the countries with the highest incidence of accident and mortality associated with road and traffic accidents. Studying the prevalence of acute post- traumatic stress disorder among the victims of traffic accidents, and also the causes and context of this type of disorder, especially in children, can help to clarify most dimensions of psychological complications of these types of accidents in the community.
Method: The current study is a cross-sectional type. The determined sample was divided into classes, based on sex and age groups, by the proportional allocation method. A random selection of samples was made among victims of traffic accidents, who were referred to the hospitals covered by Tehran University of Medical
Sciences, during the year 2014. Data for measuring the acute posttraumatic stress disorder in children was collected using a standard questionnaire.
Results: A total of 450 participants, including 344 (76.4%) males and 106 (23.6%) females, were investigated. The mean and standard deviation of age of participants in the research were 10.90 and 4.04 years, respectively. Based on the results of principal components analysis, 121 (26.9%) and 76 (16.9%) of the studied children have had the symptoms of mild and severe post traumastress during the interviews, while 253 (56.2%) had no symptoms of post trauma- stress disorder. After removal of the effect of confounding variables, the relationship between the gender, maternal education level, and the location of accident, ethnicity and the elapsed time after the accident was evaluated with the post trauma-stress, using the logistic regression models. These results were statistically significant.
Conclusion: Given the importance of effect of environmental and socially-economic factors on the incidence of complications caused by injuries and accidents related to children, especially on acute posttrauma stress, it is therefore necessary to carry out further studies on elimination of the economic, environmental and social risk factors, in order to identify these factors in a more detailed manner.