The children of the Argentinean desaparecidos: Traumatic attachment-related experiences

Cecilia de Baggis, Magdalena Jiménez Naharro and Susanna Pallini

Children and Youth Services Review, 2022, vol. 137, issue C

Abstract: During the military dictatorship (1976–1983), an estimated 30,000 people were murdered. The lives of the Disappeared Victims’ Children (DVCs) have been characterized by trauma: some of them were born in detention centers and were illegally adopted by military acquaintances, while others lived with their surviving and grieving relatives. This research attempted to explore the relationships among eighteen DVCs’ disorganized/unresolved attachment, their dissociative and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms, and the description of their caregivers as frightened or abusive, by administering the Dissociative Experience Scale (DES), the PTSD Checklist (PCL-C) and the Adult Attachment Interview, using a mixed method based on the qualitative analyses of the AAIs in conjunction with the standard AAI coding. Even though all eighteen participants described traumatic experiences, only eight showed a disorganized/unresolved attachment. Disorganized/unresolved DVCs showed higher scores for both PTSD (M = 36.00) and DES (M = 22.89) compared to resolved ones (PCL-C mean = 31.40; DES M = 13.46).

Keywords: Argentinean dictatorship victims; Trauma; Frightening/frightened caregivers; Disorganized/unresolved attachment; Dissociation. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190740922001141
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:137:y:2022:i:c:s0190740922001141

DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2022.106478

Access Statistics for this article

Children and Youth Services Review is currently edited by Duncan Lindsey

More articles in Children and Youth Services Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().