Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder among Anglo- and Mexican-American Male Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan

研究生艾琳·p·芬利（Erin P. Finley）将在彼得·j·布朗（Peter J. Brown）博士的指导下，进行人类学研究，研究种族、家庭支持和服兵役如何影响男性创伤后应激障碍和其他部署后压力的经历。她将比较参加过伊拉克和阿富汗战争的盎格鲁裔和墨西哥裔美国男性退伍军人如何理解和应对部署和回归平民生活的压力。研究的核心问题是：战后创伤和痛苦是如何以及在多大程度上受到其发生的社会和文化环境的影响？虽然对创伤后应激障碍的病因进行了相当多的流行病学研究，但关于社会和文化变量如何调节风险因素仍存在疑问。人类学的民族志方法特别适合填补这一空白。研究人员将在Tejeda诊所进行研究，该诊所由德克萨斯州圣安东尼奥市的德克萨斯大学健康科学中心监督。圣安东尼奥有大量的退伍军人、军事基地和为退伍军人服务的医院。它也是一个很大一部分人口自认为是墨西哥裔美国人的地区。研究方法将包括参与退伍军人及其家人的生活，并使用经过测试的调查工具进行一系列半结构化访谈，以160名退伍军人及其家人为样本，以及一小部分临床医生和社区成员为样本。她还将通过标准清单、量表和问卷收集数据。目的是了解退伍军人、家属、临床医生和社区成员是如何理解军队和平民生活的，以及这些理解是如何受到种族、男子气概观念、创伤后应激障碍相关或其他心理困扰程度的影响的。这项研究对培养社会科学家有很大的帮助。它还将有助于发展社会科学理论，一方面是关于个人和群体经验之间的复杂关系，另一方面是社会和文化规范。它还将为如何在战斗部署后最好地支持不同种族的退伍军人及其家属提供见解。

Graduate student Erin P. Finley, supervised by Dr. Peter J. Brown, will undertake anthropological research on how men's experiences with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and other post-deployment stresses are shaped by ethnicity, family support, and military service. She will compare how Anglo- and Mexican-American male veterans of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan understand and respond to the stresses of deployment and the return to civilian life. The central research question is: how and to what degree are post-war trauma and distress shaped by the social and cultural environments in which they occur? While there has been considerable epidemiological research on the causes of PTSD, there still are questions remaining about how risk factors are mediated by social and cultural variables. Anthropological ethnographic methods are particularly well suited to filling that gap.The researcher will carry out the research in the Tejeda clinic, which is overseen by the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in San Antonio, Texas. San Antonio has large concentrations of veterans, military bases, and hospitals serving veterans. It is also a region where a large proportion of the population self-identifies as Mexican-American. Research methods will include participating in the lives of veterans and their families and a series of semi-structured interviews using tested survey instruments, for a sample of 160 veterans and family members, as well as a smaller sample of clinicians and community members. She also will gather data with standard checklists, scales, and questionnaires. The goal is to understand how veterans, families, clinicians, and fellow community members make sense of military and civilian life, and how these understandings are shaped by ethnicity, ideas about masculinity, and levels of PTSD-related or other psychological distress. This research will contribute significantly to the education of a social scientist. It also will contribute to developing social science theory about the complex relationships between individual and group experience, on the one hand, and social and cultural norms, on the other. It also will provide insight into how best to support veterans and their families of different ethnic groups following combat deployment.