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Copyright of European Journal of Psychotraumatology is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The war-related process of disintegration of a highly integrated and multi-ethnic community is described using a series of studies done in the city of Vukovar (Croatia) as a case example. After analyzing the key points of the community social breakdown, the three roots of ongoing ethnic division are explored: the feelings of being betrayed by important others at life-important situations; massive suffering and traumatization; and lack of compassion and acknowledgment of the victimhood. These also influence the inner dynamic of the divided community in which the strong social norm is not to cross the ethnic lines in public. When the schools became divided after the war so that the Serb and Croat children started going to separate schools, opportunity to meet each other across the ethnic lines became and remained severely limited. The implications for children that grow up in an ethnically divided community are documented in a study of children's and parental inter-ethnic attitudes and behaviors. The study included 1,671 students aged 12 to 16 and their parents. It showed that the children had more out-group biases and negative attitudes, and were more likely to choose discriminative behaviors towards their peers from the other ethnic group. Consequences for the future community inter-ethnic relations in the post-war societies and life limitations the children face are discussed. (Contains 2 figures, 2 tables, and 2 footnotes.)

Copyright of European Journal of Psychotraumatology is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Interviews with 183 mothers of refugee families indicated a considerable range of stress-related reactions among displaced children, including sleeping and eating disorders, separation fears, and withdrawal or aggression. Children exhibited a significantly higher incidence of stress reactions if their mothers had difficulty coping with the stress of displacement. (DB)

Among numerous procedures for determination of the psychophysical relation, one approach has seldom been applied. Essential in this method is to present a set of stimuli whose intensity increases in fixed time following different forms. The objective stimulus increment, which the subjects perceive as linear growth directly, represents the inverse psychophysical relation. In this paper the method was tested in the fields of click frequency and sound pressure. This procedure was named 'Perception of the Form of Stimulus Increment in Time'. In comparison to other psychophysical approaches, this one has several advantages. The principal ones are the following: (1) In assessing the psychophysical relation it is not necessary to try to measure the perceptual magnitude; and (2) the psychophysical relation is directly determined by its dynamic pattern. In this paper modifications to the method are reported which facilitate the subject's task and avoid some differences in subjects' individual approaches to the task. The modified procedure leads to results satisfactorily independent of the influence of the factors irrelevant to the psychophysical relationship.

Two groups of refugee families participated in a program aimed at preventing children's mental health problems. The program attempted to gain insight into the character and scope of problems of refugee families and to develop and implement a spectrum of interventions that would meet their specific psychological needs. Data about the family situation and the psychosocial adaptation of refugee children to displacement was gathered during detailed structured interviews with the mothers, while the study families were accommodated either in a shelter or with host families. A considerable range of stress-related reactions among displaced children were identified (e.g., sleeping and eating disorders, separation fears, and withdrawal or aggression). Refugee children exhibited a significantly higher incidence of stress reactions if their mothers had difficulty coping with the stress of displacement. The findings also indicated that children in the collective shelter were at greater mental health risk than their peers housed with host families.

This study addresses the relations between AIDS-related knowledge, attitudes, and behavior change among university students. A questionnaire covering such issues and personal background variables was administered to 750 students at the University of Zagreb. Overall, 62.7% of the knowledge items were answered corrrectly, while functional, self-protective aspects of knowledge proved to be much better than general knowledge. On the average, attitudinal responses were moderately liberal. Both self-reported change in risk-reduction behavior and personal concern due to the appearance of AIDS were very small. Correlations of risk-reducing behavior with permissive (.15) and restrictive (.14) attitude orientations and with general and functional knowledge (.08) were modest. The level of personal concern correlated neither with permissive attitudes nor with functional knowledge, while it correlated negatively with restrictive attitudes (-.20) and with general knowledge (-.08). Substantial association was only established between functional knowledge and permissive (.51) and restrictive attitude orientations (-.23). It is concluded that, in addition to knowledge and attitudes, a number of factors which restrain desired behavioral adjustment should be considered in anti-AIDS campaigns, such as perceived level of exposure to HIV in a particular environment, young age-specific illusion of invulnerability, peer norms, and others.

This article presents an attempt to find out whether supplementing the original nine subdimensions of the widely used Correctional Institutions Environment Scale (CIES) with a few additional ones provides any significant new information about institutional climate. Three new subscales containing 39 items were developed. They were named Judiciary System, Socio-spatial Conditions, and Physical Environment Conditions. The instrument was administered to all 398 male residents in both a maximum and a minimum security correctional facility. The factor analysis showed that the new subscales were related to the same general factor as the original ones. The linear stepwise regression indicated that the Physical Environment Conditions and Socio-spatial Conditions subscales were superior to the six original ones in discriminating between the two very different penal institutions. The proposed nine sub-dimensions of the CIES seem to be neither the only nor the most distinctive attributes of the correctional social climate.

Copyright of European Journal of Psychotraumatology is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This letter provides an update on the activities of "The Global Collaboration on Traumatic Stress" (GC-TS) as first described by Schnyder et al. in 2017. It presents in further detail the projects of the first theme, in particular the development of and initial data on the Global Psychotrauma Screen (GPS), a brief instrument designed to screen for the wide range of potential outcomes of trauma. English language data and ongoing studies in several languages provide a first indication that the GPS is a feasible, reliable and valid tool, a tool that may be very useful in the current pandemic of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Further multi-language and cross-cultural validation is needed. Since the start of the GC-TS, new themes have been introduced to focus on in the coming years: a) Forcibly displaced persons, b) Global prevalence of stress and trauma related disorders, c) Socio-emotional development across cultures, and d) Collaborating to make traumatic stress research data "FAIR". The most recent theme added is that of Global crises, currently focusing on COVID-19-related projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]