Reports on the functional and diagnostic status of Khmer refugees, 12 years after initial interviews with them when they were high school students in Portland, Oregon, in 1983-1984. Nearly all of the students as children had endured the horrors of the Pol Pot era in Cambodia. Of the original 46 Khmer adolescents interviewed, 31 were re-interviewed at the 12-year mark, and their responses were compared to earlier feedback at the 3-year and 6-year marks. A variety of survey instruments were employed, including those that measured posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression. Interviews revealed that a majority of the students were working or pursuing educational goals. Survey results also indicated that while rates of depression dropped between the third and sixth years, they subsequently increased slightly. PTSD diagnosis, however, revealed a variable pattern in which PTSD symptoms appeared early in some subjects and then disappeared or appeared much later in other subjects. Clinicians assessing and treating war-traumatized refugee patients need to appreciate the chronic, undulating symptom profile of PTSD and the possibility of its delayed onset, even years after the initial trauma.
