Enhancing Children's Resilience in Schools to Confront Trauma: The Impact on Teachers.

BACKGROUND: Children's exposure to stressful events requires effective interventions to strengthen adaptive development. Expanding the teachers' role to deliver resilience-focused interventions has been shown to enhance children's coping and to have a positive impact on the teachers themselves. METHOD: This study compared the self-efficacy and perceived performance of 48 teachers following the implementation of such an intervention with 52 control teachers. RESULTS: Trained teachers reported higher self-efficacy and perceived performance. Associations between years of experience, perceived performance and self-efficacy are discussed. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides further evidence on the positive impact of teacher-delivered interventions on teachers' performance and self-efficacy. Future studies should replicate this design with a larger sample to examine stages of professional experience, grades, before-after measures, association with students' coping and include male teachers.

Preschool Israeli Children Exposed to Rocket Attacks: Assessment, Risk, and Resilience.

Preschool children are among the most vulnerable populations to adversity. This study described the effects of 4 weeks of daily exposure to rocket attacks on children living on Israel's southern border. Participants enrolled in this study were 122 preschool children (50% boys) between the ages 3 and 6 years from 10 kindergartens. We assessed mothers' report of children's symptoms according to the DSM-IV and alternative criteria resembling the DSM-5 criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), general adaptation, traumatic exposure, and stressful life events 3 months after the war. The prevalence of PTSD was lower when the diagnosis was derived from the DSM-IV (4%) than from the DSM-5 criteria (14%). Mothers of children with 4 or more stressful life events reported more functional impairment in social, occupational, and other important areas of functioning compared to children with 0 or 1 stressful life event. Children with more severe exposure showed more severe symptoms and mothers had more concerns about the child's functioning (η(p)(2) = .09-.25). Stressful life events and exposure to traumatic experiences accounted for 32% of the variance in PTSD and 19% of the variance in the adaptation scale. Results were explored in terms of risk and resilience factors.