Rorschach protocols from children and adolescents diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Child Psychiatry
• Forensic Psychology

Background:

• Rorschach protocols are used to assess psychological functioning in children and adolescents.
• Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) are common in youth and can impact cognitive processes.
• Exner's Schizophrenic Index (SCZI) is designed to identify disordered thinking and inaccurate perception.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare Rorschach protocol variables between children and adolescents diagnosed with PTSD and ODD.
• To investigate whether the SCZI and its component variables differentiate between PTSD and ODD groups.
• To propose a renaming of the SCZI to better reflect its functional utility.

Main Methods:

• Rorschach protocols from 35 children/adolescents with PTSD and 35 with ODD were analyzed.
• Comparison of 12 specific Rorschach variables between the two groups and normative data.
• Statistical analysis to identify significant differences in SCZI and its sub-tests.

Main Results:

• Both PTSD and ODD groups differed significantly from normative data on 12 Rorschach variables.
• The SCZI and three of its sub-tests (X + %, RawSumSS, WgtSumSS) were significantly different between PTSD and ODD groups.
• The PTSD group exhibited more extreme scores on these differentiating variables.

Conclusions:

• The SCZI effectively identifies disordered thinking and inaccurate perception in youth with PTSD, challenging previous assumptions about its specificity to schizophrenia.
• Trauma can disrupt a child's sense of a predictable and trustworthy world, leading to cognitive distortions.
• Renaming the SCZI to the Perception and Thinking Index (PATI) would more accurately represent its function.