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Introduction: A traumatic event is an extremely threatening and frightening experience in an individual's life. Children who are exposed to traumatic events are twice as likely to develop a mental disorder. Screening can provide insight into the traumatic experience of children, identifying those eligible for further evaluation, and support. With this aim, we evaluated the psychometric properties of the Lifetime Incidence of Traumatic Events questionnaire (LITE) in Slovene by calculating retest reliabilty, construct validity (cross-informant agreement) and external validity, where we calculated the correlation of the number of differenet traumatic events with psychopathological symptoms. Methods: 280 child-parent pairs (children aged 11.3 ± 2.2 years) from various Slovenian primary schools participated in the study. They were divided into two groups: 180 healthy primary school students and 100 children with Type 1 Diabetes (our study was a part of a larger study The Influence of Psychobiological Adversity on Children and Adolescents with Type 1 Diabetes Study). Two versions of the LITE questionnaire were used. Children completed the child report (LITE-S) and parents the parent report (LITE-P) version. After 4 weeks, 117 children, and 114 parents filled out the LITEs again. External validity was assessed using the Youth Self Report and Child Behaviour Checklist syndrome-oriented scales. Results: Retest reliability for individual scales was r = 0.469-0.639 (ρ = 0.443-0.636; p < 0.001), but higher for individual items (κ = 0.263-0.821; p < 0.001). Correlations between reports from parents and children were r = 0.313-0.345 (ρ = 0.317-0.348; p < 0.001). The number of different events experienced by children correlated significantly with the measured depressive-anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms. Conclusions: Based on our results, the LITE-S and LITE-P "All events" scale have acceptable psychometric properties for use in research and in clinical practise screening. We recommend looking at single items, taking into consideration the responses from both the child and the parent for more precise information. To improve the precision of the psychodiagnostic capacity of the questionnaire, further research on various populations should be performed.
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Background/Objective: Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is among the most common chronic diseases in children/adolescents, and the incidence continues to rise worldwide. Different environmental factors have been evaluated in the etiology. In the present study, we investigated the role of attachment examining whether insecure attachment to carers or carers' own attachment insecurity was related to a higher risk of T1D in children. Methods: We included 101 children with T1D (mean age 11.8 years), 106 healthy controls (11.6 years), and one of their carers. We assessed children's attachment using the Child Attachment Interview and carers' attachment using the Relationship Structures Questionnaire. We constructed binary multinomial logistic regression models using attachment to mothers, carers' attachment representations, and stressful life-events as T1D predictors. Results: Higher carer attachment anxiety was associated with the child's T1D diagnosis (p < 0.05; R 2 = 0.0613) while security of attachment to mothers showed no significant association. When mothers' education was included in the model, both attachment anxiety in higher educated mothers and stressful life events showed a significant association with the child's T1D (p < 0.001; R 2 = 0.293). Conclusions: Our findings suggest that higher attachment-related anxiety in carers with high education and stressful life events are associated with T1D in children.
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Suicide is a well-defined public health problem and is a complex phenomenon influenced by a number of different risk factors, including genetic ones. Numerous studies have examined serotonin system genes. Monoamine oxidase A (MAO-A) is an outer mitochondrial membrane enzyme which is involved in the metabolic pathway of serotonin degradation. Upstream variable number of tandem repeats (uVNTR) in the promoter region of MAOA gene affects the activity of transcription. In the present study we genotyped MAOA-uVNTR polymorphism in 266 suicide victims and 191 control subjects of Slovenian population, which ranks among the European and world populations with the highest suicide rate. Genotyping was performed with polymerase chain reaction and agarose gel electrophoresis. Using a separate statistical analysis for female and male subjects we determined the differences in genotype distributions of MAOA-uVNTR polymorphism between the studied groups. Statistical analysis showed a trend towards 3R allele and suicide, and associated 3R allele with non-violent suicide method on stratified data (20 suicide victims). This is the first study associating highly suicidal Slovenian population with MAOA-uVNTR polymorphism.