PROBABLE SIMILARITES PSYCOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL/CULTURAL
             After a serious automobile accidents Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder could take place in any person regardless of their age. PTSD may begin immediately following the event or may not surface until weeks or months later. Treatment
             and the passage of time may diminish its duration and its severity. For a few, the symptoms disappear entirely. Some other symptoms that are associated with serious automobile accidents are re-experiencing the traumatic event, persistently avoiding stimuli associated with the accident and night terrors. Crash survivors develop driving phobias that could prevent them from riding in cars.
             PROBABLE DIFFERENCES PSYCOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL/CULTURAL
             Since a child can not form a cause and effect relationship between their behavior and the consequence until age five it is likely that the ten-year-old would understand why the accident took place. The four-year-old child would not be able to understand the need for the operations or the rest and recovery period afterwards. While the ten year old would most likely not complain about the recovery period because he or she would understand what would be taking place.
             PreOperational Thought (2 to 6/7 years) At this age, according to Piaget, children acquire representational skills in the areas mental imagery, and especially language. They are very self-oriented, and have an egocentric view; that is, PreOperational children can use these representational skills only to view the world from their own perspective.
             This could make it very difficult when dealing with the four year old after the accident. The four-year-old could start showing signs of attachment disorder due to the distance between the child and the parents. The four-year-old would not understand why his parents could not be able to be at the hospital every day. This could make the child have feelings of abandonment.
             The feelings of abandonment...