Page 58 - Post-traumatic stress disorder in adults with mild intellectual disability: Screening, assessment, and brief intensive EMDR therapy

Chapter 3
Screening may help to identify PTSD in individuals with MID-BIF at an
early stage. Several trauma screeners based on the DSM-5-TR have been
developed and validated for individuals without MID-BIF. However, these
screeners have not been adapted or validated for people with MID-BIF. When
employing such questionnaires for individuals with MID-BIF, it is important
to make adjustments, including simplified language and supporting
visualization, to improve accessibility and comprehension (Kooijmans et
al., 2022). Until recently, a screening instrument for PTSD was not available
for individuals with MID-BIF.
The present study
For the purpose of developing a PTSD screener adapted to people with
MID-BIF, we adapted the Kinder en Jeugd Trauma Screener (KJTS; Kooij et
al., 2025) after permission from the KJTS research group. The language
level of the KJTS appears to be at the level that is also used in clinical work
with adults with MID-BIF. However further adaptations were necessary to
align the screener with the perspectives of individuals with MID-BIF (e.g.
some of the KJTS refers to school and not to work; see Methods section).
For example, the item content of the KJTS refers to parents and relatives
but not to professional caregivers. The KJTS consists of three parts. The
first part of the KJTS is based on the Clinical Administered PTSD Scale for
Children and Adolescents (CAPS-CA; Nader et al., 1996). Both the second
and third parts of the KJTS were developed using the Child and Adolescent
Trauma Screen (CATS-2; Sachser et al., 2022). There are two versions of
the KJTS: the self-report and caregiver report versions. Recent research
shows that the KJTS self-report version is valid and reliable in screening
for PTSD in children and adolescents (7–22 years old) in the general
population (Kooij et al., 2025). We adapted the KJTS self-report version
into the Trauma Screener-Intellectual Disability Adult version (TS-ID adult
version). The KJTS caregiver report version was adapted into the Trauma
Screener-Intellectual Disability Proxy version (TS-ID proxy version).
The purpose of the present study was to evaluate TS-ID by examining the
validity and reliability of both versions of the screener for use in adults with
MID-BIF. We also investigated which cut-off value of the TS-ID adult version
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