Forced displacements and their psychosocial consequences in adolescent refugees and their families have received increasing attention in recent years. Although supportive family relations play a key role in buffering the impact of traumatization in adolescents, parental ability to provide such is often subject to extreme pressure. Under conditions of forced dislocation and fear, maladaptive interpersonal strategies in the parent–child relationships may develop, contributing to the onset of psychopathology. We explore new aspects of attachment-related issues for the understanding and treatment of adolescent refugees who have experienced multiple traumas in their childhood. We used a multimethod assessment battery including the Adult Attachment Projective Picture System (AAP), the Structured Clinical Interview, the Youth Self Report and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale in an adolescent boy with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Our subject was an adolescent refugee from the Middle East who demonstrated an unresolved attachment when confronted with loss and fear. His responses on the AAP evoked aspects of insecure-unresolved attachment, including his belief that it is not safe to trust in attachment figures, his limited access to traumatic attachment experiences, his impaired ability to take concrete actions when dealing with threatening attachment situations and the unintentional role-reversal shed new light on our understanding of his traumatic experiences, family functioning and psychopathological symptoms. Our results demonstrate the utility of the AAP in an adolescent refugee with PTSD by expanding our knowledge of a diverse range of experiences across the interpersonal, cognitive, cultural and developmental contexts that formed the basis for an individualized treatment plan. © 2018, © 2018 Taylor & Francis.

Post-traumatic stress disorder Attachment traumatic loss Treatment Adolescents complex trauma

personal experience family functioning refugee adolescent disease human clinical assessment Life Change Events Refugees life event object relation dissociative experiences scale Object Attachment priority journal Structured Clinical Interview for DSM Disorders multiple trauma Humans mental patient psychology Adolescent male psychological rating scale Psychiatric Status Rating Scales Parent-Child Relations child psychiatry Article Wechsler intelligence scale Adult Attachment Projective Picture System school refusal Youth Self Report posttraumatic stress disorder structured interview Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic medical history disease association personality assessment child parent relation