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Hindi Research Article
Autistic Behaviors Prevalence in Young Children Three Years after the Devastating Haiti Earthquake
| Judite Blanc1*, Anne Antoine2 and Yoram Mouchenik3 | |
| 1Clinical Psychology University of Paris 13 Nord, Villetaneuse, France | |
| 2Clinical Psychology, Neuropsychology concentration, Adler University, Chicago, USA | |
| 3Clinical Psychology, Laboratory UTRPP, University of Paris 13 Nord, Villetaneuse, France | |
| Corresponding Author : | Judite BLANC, Ph.D Candidate in Clinical Psychology, University of Paris 13 99 Avenue Jean-Baptiste Clément 93430 Villetaneuse France. Courtesy Faculty at University of South Florida Tel: 305-964-9728 E-mail: juditeblanc@usf.edu; juditeblanc@yahoo.fr |
| Received January 28, 2015; Accepted March 05, 2015; Published March 12, 2015 | |
| Citation: Blanc J, Antoine A, Mouchenik Y (2015) Autistic Behaviors Prevalence in Young Children Three Years after the Devastating Haiti Earthquake. J Preg Child Health 2:138. doi: 10.4172/2376-127X.1000138 | |
| Copyright: © 2015 Blanc J, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. | |
Abstract
Objective: The goal of this study was to examine, prospectively the prevalence of autistic behaviors in a cohort of young children who were exposed in utero to a devastating earthquake 3 years later.
Method: Subjects were 364 (50.8% boys) children 39 months old (3.3 years) who were in utero during the 2010 Haiti earthquake that resulted in a death toll of approximately 222,000. In August 2013, mothers completed several questionnaires including those about autistics behaviors and emotional problems in children (Echelle d’Evaluation des Comportements Autistiques Révisée -ECAR or Autistic Behaviors Scale Revised and the Child Behavior Check-List 1 ½-5).
Results: Eight (2.2%) out of 364 children surveyed met criteria for intense autistics behaviors, 4 came from the epicenter and 4 were exposed as a foetus at the 3rd trimester, a large part of their mothers (7) needed psychological support, and 5 of those mothers experienced the death of family member following the disaster.
Conclusions: the prevalence of autistic behaviors found in a cohort of 3 years old children exposed to the disaster is high compared to other estimates worldwide. The results of this first study to investigate prevalence of autism in a cohort of exposed children prior to birth to earthquake in Haiti underlines the need for further and larger epidemiological research with culturally sensitive tools for the evaluation of young subjects exposed directly or indirectly to traumatic events in Haiti.
