A school based study of psychological disturbance in children following the Omagh bomb

Table 4 Sample characteristics by exposure to the bombing

	Type of exposure					p
Characteristic	No exposure	Near miss	Loss	Exposed - in town after	Exposed - in town at time	p
Age (Mean)	11.5	11.3	11.4	11.3	11.2	0.233
IES (Mean)	13.17	16.05	17.07	20.29	21.73	0.00**
BDS (Mean)	8.08	9.35	8.92	10.02	10.38	0.00**
SCAS (Mean)	24.23	30.37	29.19	33.85	34.89	0.00**
Female (%)	50.7	55.0	51.3	53.8	52.5	0.959
Previous psychological treatment (yes)	1.3	0.0	3.6	6.9	8.2	0.00**
Post-event support (yes)	0.7	0.0	1.9	7.0	15.0	0.00**
Perceived life threat (yes)	-	0.0	-	6.0	21.1	0.003**
Physically injured (yes)	-		-	10.9	9.9
Witnessed serious injury (yes)	-		-	92.1	98.0
Witness people dying (yes)	-		-	61.1	70.3
Witnessed people dead (yes)	-		-	39.8	57.4

Note: “Exposed - in town at time" means in Omagh town when the bomb exploded and witnessed injury or death of others or was directly harmed. “Exposed - in town after” means in Omagh town shortly after the bomb exploded and witnessed injury or death of others or was directly harmed. “Near miss” means in Omagh town when the bomb exploded but did not witness injury or death of others and was not directly harmed. “Loss” means experienced loss or injury of someone close (family, relative or friend) but no direct harm. “No exposure” means not in Omagh town at the time or shortly after the bomb exploded, not a witness and did not experience loss. “IES”: Impact of Events Scale; “BDS”: Birleson Depression Scale: “SCAS”: Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale. P: *significant at the 0.05 level; **significant at the 0.01 level.

ISSN: 1753-2000