Psychiatric outcomes amongst adult survivors of childhood burns
Section snippets
Sample
The original burn-exposed cohort consisted of 1101 children who were admitted to South Australia's major children's trauma hospital, the Women's and Children's Hospital (WCH) for burns between the years of 1980 and 1990. Participants were recruited as adults, 21–31 years after their burn occurred. Of these 1101 children, 655 (59.5%) were not able to be contacted within the time frame of the study, 272 (24.7%) completing the interview component of the protocol, 214 (19.4%) completing the
Responders
Data obtained at the time of hospital admission was used to compare responders (N = 272) and non-responders (N = 829). Non-responders were more likely to be male (78.7%) than female (68.6%), (χ2(1, N = 1101) = 13.70, p < .001), however, the strength of this relationship was weak (ϕ2 = −0.11). The age at the time of the burn did not significantly impact on the response rate (t(1099) = −0.139, p = .889).
Demographics
At follow-up, participants were an average of 31.84 years (SD = 5.3 years, range = 23–48 years). There were 145
Discussion
This study examined the mental health outcomes of adults who had been hospitalised as children for burns. It is the largest study to date to follow-up childhood burn survivors into adulthood. It found that around a third of participants had experienced an affective disorder (either a depressive disorder, or bipolar disorder) at some stage in their life, which is substantially higher than published rates for the Australian national community (33.7% versus 15%) [25]. In particular, participants
Conflicts of interest statement
None of the authors have any financial or personal relationships with other people or organisations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work.
Funding
This research was supported by a project grant from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC Project Grant ID 565380) and from a grant provided by Burns SA.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to acknowledge the following organisations and personnel for their assistance and support with the project: Dr Levina Clark, Chris Davies and Thao Tran from the Centre for Traumatic Stress Studies, University of Adelaide, Natasha Forster from the Adelaide Women's and Children's Hospital, Burns SA, the Burns Unit of the Adelaide Women's and Children's Hospital, the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Office of South Australia. A special thank you to all participants who
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