Parent  /child discrepancy in reporting children’s post-traumatic stress reactions after a traffic accident GRETE DYB, ARE HOLEN, KJERSTI BRÆNNE, MARIT S. INDREDAVIK, JON AARSETH Dyb G, Holen A, Brænne K, Indredavik MS, Aarseth J. Parent /child discrepancy in reporting children’s post-traumatic stress reactions after a traffic accident. Nord J Psychiatry 2003;57:339  /344. Oslo. ISSN 0803-9488. This study examines possible parent  /child discrepancies in the reporting of post-traumatic stress reactions in children after a traffic accident. Sixteen children exposed to the same traffic accident were interviewed about post-traumatic stress reactions at 5 weeks and at 6 months after the event, utilizing the Child Posttraumatic Stress Reaction Index (CPTS-RI). Independently, the parents’ reported their child’s degree of post-traumatic stress reactions on the CPTS-RI: Parent questionnaire, at the same two times. Clinicians also assessed the children’s level of general functioning on the Children’s Global Assessment Scale. The children reported significantly more post-traumatic stress reactions than observed by their parents 4 weeks after the accident. The parent  /child discrepancy was more pronounced among younger children. The level of children’s self-reported post-traumatic stress reactions decreased significantly from the first to the second assessment. At the second assessment, 6 months after the accident, there was no significant parent  /child discrepancy observed. The children showed a normal level of functioning despite their post-traumatic stress reactions. The reported parent /child discrepancy indicates that information about children’s post-traumatic stress reactions after an accident is best obtained directly from the children.  Accident, Child, Post-traumatic, Stress disorders, Traffic. Grete Dyb, M.D., Norwegian Universityof Science and Technology, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Medicine, MTFS, NO-7489 Trondheim, Norway, E-mail: grete.dyb@ medisin.ntnu.no; Accepted 14 October 2002. A broad range of events, both natural and man-made, can cause mental impairment in children. After a single major frightening event or recurring events, children may develop responses that are symptomatic of post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD (1  /7). The symptoms may fluctuate in severity over time, and, they may persist for months, or even years (8). Trauma response usually correlates with exposure, measured by both physical and emotional proximity to the event (9). Until recently, little attention has been paid to children’s psychological responses to one of the most common forms of trauma, traffic accidents. In a study conducted by Stallard et al. (10), one-third of the children involved in road traffic accidents fulfilled the diagnostic criteria for PTSD 6 weeks after the accident. Ellis et al. (11) found high levels of avoidance in 50% of the children 4  /7 months after the accidents, and in a study by de Vries et al. (12), 25% of the children suffered diagnostic PTSD 7  /12 months after the accidents. In a long-term outcome study in the wake of a bus accident, 82% of the children reported medium to high levels of intrusion and 75% reported similar levels of avoidance 1 year after the accident (13). Parental reports of their children’s psychological re- actions are often preferred in order to spare distressed children after traumatic events, although different authors have questioned the validity of parental re- ports of anxiety and other PTSD symptoms. Clinical studies have indicated that parents and teachers report less psychopathology than do the children themselves (14, 15). In a recent study by Ahmad et al. (16), childhood PTSD was significantly predicted by the children’s reports of traumatic events rather than factors related to their parents’ functioning. However, few systematic studies have addressed the dilemma of parent  /child discrepancy in reported post-traumatic stress reactions. # 2003 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/08039480310002660