Child Abuse Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Child Abuse, including details on family violence, examinations, long-term effects, psychiatrics disorders.

Mixed lateral preference in posttraumatic stress disorder.

Saltzman KM, Weems CF, Reiss AL, Carrión VG

Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.

Recent research indicates that adults with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have a higher incidence of mixed laterality with respect to handedness than the rest of the population. To test if this relationship also occurs early in life, we evaluated children with history of interpersonal trauma. Fifty-nine traumatized children were evaluated with the Clinician Administered PTSD Scale for Children and Adolescents and the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory. Forty matched healthy controls were used for comparison. Increased mixed laterality was found in all children exhibiting symptoms of PTSD when compared with healthy controls, and children who met DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for PTSD had more mixed laterality than the subthreshold traumatized group (F = 7.71; df = 2,96; p = 0.001). Within the entire traumatized group, there was a positive correlation between PTSD symptom severity and mixed laterality. Mixed laterality was positively associated with PTSD symptoms in traumatized children, suggesting that neurological abnormalities may be related to degree of PTSD symptom expression.

Published 14 February 2006 in J Nerv Ment Dis, 194(2): 142-4.
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