Psychological and behavioural implications Adolescents exposed to a traumatic event may often develop PTSD and/or other emotional and behavioural problems. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of negative or potentially traumatic events and PTSD symptoms both on behavioural disorders and the way the adolescents narrate the negative event that they experienced. 747 adolescents (476 males; 271 females; mean age = 16.45; SD = 1.57) were recruited in high school. Adolescents were asked to write down a narrative of a negative event they really experienced and then they were asked to filled out the following instruments: Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R; Weiss & Marmar, 1997); Centrality of Event Scale (CES; Berntsen & Rubin, 2006); Youth Self-Report (YSR; Achenbach 2001). Our outcomes highlight the presence of a large amount of negative events also in a normative sample, an effect between the type of event and the psychological and behavioural responses, and different narrative modalities depending on the psychological and behavioural responses elicited by the event lived.
Keywords: Adolescence, narrative, PSTD, psychological and behavioural responses.