Distress in Spouses of Vietnam Veterans: Associations With Communication About Deployment Experiences
Distress in Spouses of Vietnam Veterans: Associations With Communication About Deployment Experiences
复制标题
DOI：
10.1037/a0026680
复制
发表时间：
2012-02-01
影响因子：
2.7
通讯作者：
Renshaw, Keith D.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Campbell, Sarah B.;Renshaw, Keith D.
新兴文献显示，患有创伤后应激障碍（PTSD）症状的退伍军人的配偶或伴侣存在一致的关系和心理困扰模式。临床文献中提出的伴侣痛苦的一种可能机制是，过度讨论部署过程中的创伤事件可能对伴侣产生负面影响。在极端的情况下，一些合作伙伴被建议发展PTSD样症状，或继发性创伤应激。尽管有这些假设，但很少有经验性的测试来证明沟通这些事件的效果。在参加全国越战退伍军人重新调整研究的家庭访谈部分的465名战斗退伍军人及其配偶的样本中，我们探讨了夫妻部署相关沟通的程度如何与伴侣关系和心理困扰相关，以及这种关联是否受到退伍军人创伤后应激障碍症状严重程度的调节。结果表明，越南特定的通信负相关的关系困扰，但效果是可以忽略不计的控制后，在关系中的整体通信。另一方面，越南特定的沟通与心理困扰没有相关性，但退伍军人的PTSD症状严重程度显着调节。具体来说，沟通越南越来越多的积极与合作伙伴的心理困扰退伍军人的创伤后应激障碍的症状上升到临床范围，但无显着负相关，如创伤后应激障碍症状下降到这个水平以下的困扰。研究结果支持先前的临床建议，即夫妻对潜在创伤事件的讨论应谨慎对待，他们建议在对PTSD进行二元干预时，需要关注夫妻沟通的内容。
Emerging literature shows a consistent pattern of relationship and psychological distress in spouses or partners of combat veterans with symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). One possible mechanism of partners' distress posited in clinical literature is that excessive discussion of traumatic events from deployment may have negative effects on partners. At the extreme, some partners are suggested to develop PTSD-like symptoms, or secondary traumatic stress. Despite these hypotheses, there have been few empirical tests of the effects of communicating about such events. In a sample of 465 combat veterans and their spouses who participated in the Family Interview Component of the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study, we explored how the extent of couples' deployment-related communication was associated with partner relationships and psychological distress, and whether such associations were moderated by the severity of veterans' PTSD symptoms. Results showed that Vietnam-specific communication correlated negatively with relationship distress, but the effect was negligible after controlling for overall communication in the relationship. On the other hand, Vietnam-specific communication did not correlate with psychological distress, but the association was significantly moderated by veterans' PTSD symptom severity. Specifically, communication about Vietnam was increasingly and positively associated with partners' psychological distress as veterans' symptoms of PTSD rose into the clinical range, but nonsignificantly and negatively associated with such distress as PTSD symptoms decreased below this level. The findings support previous clinical recommendations that couples' discussions of potentially traumatic events be approached cautiously, and they suggest a need to attend to the content of couples' communications when conducting dyadic interventions for PTSD.