• Brett M McDermott, Vanessa E Cobham, Helen Berry, and Helen M Stallman.
• Kids in Mind Research: Mater Center for Service Research in Mental Health, Level 2, Community Services Building, Annerley Road, South Brisbane, Qld 4101, Australia. brett.mcdermott@mater.org.au
• Aust N Z J Psychiatry. 2010 Apr 1;44(4):384-9.

ObjectiveThe aim of the present study was to investigate whether parent report of family resilience predicted children's disaster-induced post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and general emotional symptoms, independent of a broad range of variables including event-related factors, previous child mental illness and social connectedness.MethodsA total of 568 children (mean age = 10.2 years, SD = 1.3) who attended public primary schools, were screened 3 months after Cyclone Larry devastated the Innisfail region of North Queensland. Measures included parent report on the Family Resilience Measure and Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)-emotional subscale and child report on the PTSD Reaction Index, measures of event exposure and social connectedness.ResultsSixty-four students (11.3%) were in the severe-very severe PTSD category and 53 families (28.6%) scored in the poor family resilience range. A lower family resilience score was associated with child emotional problems on the SDQ and longer duration of previous child mental health difficulties, but not disaster-induced child PTSD or child threat perception on either bivariate analysis, or as a main or moderator variable on multivariate analysis (main effect: adjusted odds ratio (OR(adj)) = 0.57, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.13-2.44). Similarly, previous mental illness was not a significant predictor of child PTSD in the multivariate model (OR(adj) = 0.75, 95%CI = 0.16-3.61).ConclusionIn this post-disaster sample children with existing mental health problems and those of low-resilience families were not at elevated risk of PTSD. The possibility that the aetiological model of disaster-induced child PTSD may differ from usual child and adolescent conceptualizations is discussed.

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