Date of Award

Summer 8-1-2000

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Jerome A. Cerny

Second Advisor

Elizabeth O'Laughlin

Third Advisor

Robert W. Grant

Abstract

Children exposed to situations of war have been shown to develop behavioral as well as psychological difficulties. Researchers have observed, however, that not all children manifest these difficulties in reaction to war situations. Therefore, scientists have attempted to look at resilient children, investigating protective and vulnerability factors in the child's environment. One such protective factor is social support. Although there have been several studies on social support, those studies have tended to focus on family support. There seems to be a void in the literature on the effects of peer support on post-traumatic stress reactions in children. The present study investigated the relationship between level of peer support and physiological, behavioral and psychological responses to a video depicting war events in Lebanese adolescents who had been exposed to a war situation. A sample of 144 adolescents aged 12 to 16 years was assigned to either a high or a low war trauma group based on severity of post-traumatic stress reactions and level of war trauma. Participants in both groups were assigned to one of three conditions. Each participant viewed a video about the war with a friend, stranger, or alone. The adolescents' reactions to the video were measured using physiological, behavioral and self-report instruments. The results of this study indicated that Lebanese adolescents in the high war trauma group displayed significantly greater physiological and psychological responses to the war video than adolescents in the low war trauma group. Moreover, peer support, defined by the presence of a friend, resulted in a significant decrease in systolic blood pressure and self-reported distress to the war video in both the high and low war trauma groups. Peer support did not have a significant effect on other physiological measures, a behavioral measure or scores on the Impact of Event Scale.

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