The relationship between maternal psychopathology and parental perceptions of their children's reactions in survivors of the 1998 US Embassy bombing in Nairobi, Kenya.

Background: The increase in terrorism worldwide has stimulated research on directly and indirectly exposed survivors, but there have been few investigations of the children of highly exposed survivors. This study examined the relationship between parental psychopathology and outcomes in their children who were exposed indirectly to a terrorist incident through their parents' exposures.

Methods: Eight to 10 months after the 1998 US Embassy bombing in Nairobi, Kenya, 280 survivors were interviewed about themselves and their 611 children using the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for DSM-IV to perform a full diagnostic assessment of survivors' pre- and post-disaster psychiatric disorders.

Trauma, grief and depression in Nairobi children after the 1998 bombing of the American Embassy.

Despite the increasingly dangerous world where trauma and loss are common, relatively few studies have explored traumatic grief in children. The 1998 American Embassy bombing in Nairobi, Kenya, provided an unfortunate opportunity to examine this topic. This report describes findings in 156 children who knew someone killed in the incident, assessed 8 to 14 months after the explosion.