Crafting a Novel Measure: Examining Youth Trauma Exposure and Developmental Trauma Disorder

Before the introduction of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of

Mental Disorders (DSM-5), published in 2013, the diagnostic criteria for posttraumatic stress

disorder (PTSD) were under specific inquiry prior to its publication (American Psychiatric

Association [APA], 2000; APA, 2013; van der Kolk, 2005). The current diagnosis of PTSD in

the DSM-5 addressed many of the concerns raised by the DSM-IV TR; still, problems remain,

particularly in regard to the diagnosis for children and adolescents (APA, 2000; APA, 2013;

Gold, Marx, Soler-Baillo, & Sloan, 2005; Kerig & Bennett, 2012; Pynoos et al., 2009;

Scheeringa, Myers, Putnam & Zeanah, 2012). Specifically, many stressful childhood experiences

may not qualify as traumatic in the DSM-5, and thus, erroneous diagnoses or under-diagnosis

may result. Evidence-based trauma exposure measures are keyed to the DSM and may underidentify

events that youth may consider traumatic; thus, there is a need for the development of a

new measure to capture these experiences. In response to criticisms of the PTSD diagnosis for

children within the DSM, a new diagnosis, with a unique pattern of symptoms, was proposed-

"developmental trauma disorder" (DTD; van der Kolk, 2005). Given the limited work on DTD,

the present study examined the utility of a new measure to assess for potentially traumatic events

and its relation to symptoms of DTD.