Els van Meijel

101 Posttraumatic stress in young children | Chapter 6 Measures We constructed a semi-structured interview for parents whose child had been involved in an accident (Meynen, van Meijel, Gigengack, & Lindauer, 2011) based on an existing protocol (Beer, Verlinden, Boer, & Lindauer, 2011). This protocol for health- care professionals contains examples of questions on children’s and parents’ acute and posttraumatic stress reactions to a traumatic event and can be used as a screening tool for PTSS in children and parents. The semi-structured interview consists of 12 open- ended questions on the following areas: the accident and the injuries, other traumatic experiences, medical/psychological history, peri- and posttraumatic reactions of the child and the parent, and coping. We constructed the interview in consultation with a child and adolescent psychiatrist (the fourth author; RJLL) and a clinical psychologist/ psychotherapist, both experienced clinicians in the field of trauma. During the semi-structured interview parents were asked about PTS symptoms of their child in the past. The questions consist of an open-ended question ( ‘Did you notice any changes in your child’s behavior in the period following the accident?’) followed by close- ended questions concerning examples of PTS symptoms (e.g., ‘ Did your child have trouble sleeping since the accident?’ and ‘Did your child have nightmares or bad dreams about the accident?’ ). These questions serve as a skip-out criterion. If parents reported one or more PTS symptoms for their child, we further assessed child PTSS with the PTSD module of the Dutch version of the Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule for DSM-IV - Child Version (ADIS-C/P; Siebelink & Treffers, 2001; Silverman & Albano, 1996). The ADIS-C/P is a semi-structured interview to assess anxiety disorders and comorbidity in children. Test-retest reliability and interrater reliability of the ADIS- C/P range from good to excellent (Lyneham et al., 2007; Silverman et al., 2001). The 17 ADIS-C/P questions are based on the 17 PTS symptoms of the DSM-IV and formed the basis of our PTSD interview. However, these questions did not fully cover the PTS symptoms according to the PTSD-AA algorithm and the DSM-5 subtype for children 6 years and younger. In order to measure PTS symptoms according to all three algorithms, we complemented the ADIS-C/P questions with a number of PTSD questions (questions 37, 41, 42, 44, 47, 51, 52, 54, 55) from the 2009 version of the Diagnostic Infant and Preschool Assessment (DIPA; Scheeringa, 2009). The DIPA is a semi-structured interview to assess symptoms of 12 DSM-IV disorders in children from late in their first year to 6 years of age (Scheeringa & Haslett, 2010). Preliminary data on the reliability and the criterion validity show that the DIPA appears to be