Developmental Differences in the Association of Peer Relationships with Traumatic Stress Symptoms

Although childhood trauma exposure has a high incidence, traumatic stress often goes untreated in children and youth. We investigated peer relationship quality as a prevention strategy for reducing traumatic stress across different developmental periods. We analyzed longitudinal data from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Wellbeing (NSCAW I) using a time-varying effect model (TVEM) to investigate the association between peer relationship quality and traumatic stress symptoms across ages 8-17 years. We controlled for a robust set of confounders identified through a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG). The unique association between peer relationship quality and traumatic stress symptoms was negative and significant from ages 8 to 8.5 years, and again from ages 9.4 to 10.9 years and at age 16.4 to 16.8 years, with maximum associations of - 1.45 T score points at age 8.5 years (95% CI = [- 2.87, - 0.40]), - 1.57 at age 9.4 years (95% CI = [- 3.13,- 0.01]), and - 1.89 at 16.7 years (95% CI = [- 3.70, - 0.09]). Peer relationship quality protected against traumatic stress during specific times during adolescent development. Our results suggest that helping youth establish and maintain positive peer relationships may be a useful prevention approach for helping them cope with trauma experiences.