Objective: The main aim of this study was to investigate the effect of war-related trauma on the subsequent social adjustment and functioning of young Cambodian refugees.Method: This longitudinal study of 67 young Cambodian refugees in Montreal interviewed in the first year of high school and then 2 years later examines a family's exposure to war related premigration trauma and its association with an adolescent's emotional and behavioral problems and social adjustment. Emotional and behavioral problems were assessed using the Youth Self-Report and an inventory of risk behavior. Social adjustment was assessed in terms of academic achievement, peer relations, and feeling of competence.Results: The trauma a family suffered before leaving their homeland and prior to the teenager's birth seems to play a protective role at various times in adolescence with regard to externalized symptoms, risk behavior, and school failure in boys, and foster positive social adjustment in girls.Conclusions: These reactions may be understood as overcompensation by the children of the survivors of a massacre, to whom the implicit duty to succeed has been passed on. They suggest that a broader range of posttraumatic responses to war situations should be investigated and that trauma's dual nature as both burden and source of strength should be examined more closely. Copyright (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Inc.

Social adjustment war trauma Young refugees Strength

battle injury refugee Cambodia Quebec human Life Change Events Refugees war Stress, Psychological family health Humans Adolescent male female Article Risk-Taking behavior disorder social adaptation Adolescent Behavior normal human affective neurosis social behavior