Family trauma and its association with emotional and behavioral problems and social adjustment in adolescent Cambodian refugees.
OBJECTIVE
The main aim of this study was to investigate the effect of war-related trauma on the subsequent social adjustment and functioning of young Cambodian refugees.


METHODS
This longitudinal study of 67 young Cambodian refugees in Montreal interviewed in the first year of high school and then 2 years later examines a family's exposure to war related premigration trauma and its association with an adolescent's emotional and behavioral problems and social adjustment. Emotional and behavioral problems were assessed using the Youth Self-Report and an inventory of risk behavior. Social adjustment was assessed in terms of academic achievement, peer relations, and feeling of competence.


RESULTS
The trauma a family suffered before leaving their homeland and prior to the teenager's birth seems to play a protective role at various times in adolescence with regard to externalized symptoms, risk behavior, and school failure in boys, and foster positive social adjustment in girls.


CONCLUSIONS
These reactions may be understood as overcompensation by the children of the survivors of a massacre, to whom the implicit duty to succeed has been passed on. They suggest that a broader range of posttraumatic responses to war situations should be investigated and that trauma's dual nature as both burden and source of strength should be examined more closely.
Rousseau
C
C
Department of Psychiatry, Montreal Children's Hospital, Quebec, Canada.
Drapeau
A
A
Platt
R
R
D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior; D002160:Cambodia / Q000208:ethnology; D005192:Family Health; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008016:Life Change Events; D008297:Male; D011792:Quebec; D012036:Refugees / Q000523:psychology*; D012309:Risk-Taking; D012919:Social Behavior; D013315:Stress, Psychological; D014857:Warfare