Do Children and Adolescents Have Different Types of Trauma Narratives and Does It Matter? Reliability and Face Validation for a Narrative Taxonomy

The construction of trauma narratives is a major component of several psychotherapy approaches for trauma‐related problems, but questions remain as to whether fully expressive narratives are necessary and whether it is detrimental to ask avoidant youths to tell their narratives repeatedly. Characteristics of trauma narratives during psychotherapy have not been examined in youths and this represents a salient gap in knowledge. This study aimed to begin filling this gap by identifying categories of trauma narratives and empirically validating them. Youths (N = 47) aged 7 to 18 years, who were involved in a randomized controlled trial, received cognitive behavioral therapy. Transcripts of all narrative exposure therapy sessions for each youth were rated. Four categories were identified and were named expressive, avoidant, fabricated, and undemonstrative. Interrater reliability for identifying these categories was good, and face validation of the categories was supported by statistically significant differences between categories on the number of data elements of the trauma events, negative emotion words, and positive emotion words. These promising findings indicate that different types of narrative styles can be reliably identified. There was strong evidence for reduction of posttraumatic stress symptoms in each of the categories (Cohen's d = 0.9 to 2.5). Favorable treatment outcomes for all categories suggest that more remembering is not always better and clients appeared to effectively deal with memories in different ways. Resumen Spanish s by the Asociación Chilena de Estrés Traumático (ACET) La construcción de narrativas del trauma es un componente importante de varios enfoques psicoterapéuticos para los problemas relacionados con el trauma, pero aún quedan preguntas sobre si son necesarias narrativas totalmente expresivas y si es perjudicial pedir a los jóvenes evitativos que relaten sus narrativas repetidamente. Las características de los relatos del trauma durante la psicoterapia no se han examinado en los jóvenes y ésto representa una brecha importante en el conocimiento. Este estudio tuvo como objetivo comenzar a llenar este vacío identificando las categorías de narrativas traumáticas y validándolas empíricamente. Jóvenes (N = 47) de 7 a 18 años, participaron en un estudio aleatorio controlado (RCT), y recibieron terapia cognitivo conductual. Se calificaron las transcripciones de todas las sesiones de terapia de exposición narrativa de cada joven. Se