Traumatic experiences in childhood can lead to trauma symptoms and impaired mental health, especially when children are exposed to war and political violence. Despite signifcant attention to child’s exposure to traumas, few instruments to detect potentially traumatic events have been validated psychometrically. Our study aimed to develop, adapt and validate a user-friendly traumatic events checklist in Palestinian children living in three areas afected by low-intensity war and ongoing political and military violence. 965 Palestinian children (494 males and 471 females) living in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem were administered with a tailor-made Traumatic Events checklist, Children Impact of Events scale, and Strengths and Difculties Scale. Exploratory and Confrmatory factor analysis was run to detect the factorial structure of the checklist. Furthermore, ANOVA was performed to identify statistically signifcant demographic diferences among participants. A three factors structure emerged with Political violencerelated traumatic experiences (PVTE), military violence against individuals (MVI), and military violence against individuals and families (MVF). Gaza children and adolescents resulted in being the most exposed to potentially traumatic events. The instrument can clearly portray potentially traumatic experiences in children exposed to violent events and adverse childhood experiences.

Title

BMC Psychiatry

Publisher

Springer Nature

Publisher Country

United Kingdom

Indexing

Scopus

Impact Factor

3.4

Publication Type

Online only

Volume

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Year

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Pages

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