Interventions for Adolescents with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) inFoster Care: A Scoping Review

Sammanfattning

Intuoduction: In recent years, an increasing nmuber of adolescents are diagnosed with Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), especially children in foster care. To reduce trauma symptoms in this vulnerable population, the aim of this study is to map and describe interventions for adolescents with PTSD in foster care to improve their mental health. Method: A scoping review was designed to achieve the goal, which identified 1046 peer-reviewed articles published from 2006 to 2026, and 13 studies were included. Results: Interventions were categorized into four groups: (1) Intervention for children and parents, (2) Intervention for teachers and school staff, (3) Interventions for children only, (4) Interventions for parents only. The main findings show that the identified interventions were effective in reducing PTSD symptoms among adolescents in foster care, and trauma-focused cognitive behavioural therapy (TF-CBT) was the most commonly used intervention among included studies. Discussion: The findings may lack validity and have limited generalizability due to small sample sizes. Participants (e.g., foster parents and workers) reported positive and negative perspectives of interventions, but children's perceptions were not reported in the included articles. Future research should focus on larger sample sizes and pay greater attention to adolescents' perspectives.