Kent State University has been awarded a grant for $81,445 from the Ohio Department of Public Safety for research on the impact of traumatic injury on child patients and their families. The Ohio Division of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) and the State EMS Board created grants from fines collected from seat belt violations to improve trauma patient care and emergency medical services in Ohio.
Douglas Delahanty, Ph.D., Kent State professor of psychology and director of the Initiative for Clinical and Translational Research, applied for the grant in response to a call sent out by the Ohio Department of Public Safety.
Delahanty and a team at Akron Children’s Hospital have been identifying variables that predict which children and their families will have problems adjusting to traumatic injury. Delahanty’s grant summary states that posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is the third most common psychiatric disorder, and is estimated to affect more than 10 million Americans at some point in their lives.
“We focus on trying to identify child and family factors that can be used to predict which families will suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder and depression symptoms so that we can target intervention approaches to those individuals,” says Delahanty.
Delahanty says the goal of the research is to identify the rates of acute stress disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder in child traumatic disorders and to determine how parents’ reactions to a child’s injury can impact the child’s recovery.
The data collected will be used to create screeners to assist in identifying at-risk children, and inform the content of intervention to prevent the development of persistent distress.
“We were very excited to hear of the funding as it allows us to continue our very productive collaborative work,” says Delahanty.