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

研究生Erin P. Finley由Peter J. Brown博士监督，将进行人类学研究，探讨男性创伤后应激障碍和其他部署后压力的经历如何受到种族，家庭支持和兵役的影响。她将比较在伊拉克和阿富汗作战的英美和墨西哥裔美国男性退伍军人如何理解和应对部署和恢复平民生活的压力。研究的中心问题是：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？虽然已经有相当多的流行病学研究的原因创伤后应激障碍，仍然有问题仍然存在的风险因素是如何介导的社会和文化变量。人类学民族志方法特别适合填补这一空白。研究人员将在特赫达诊所进行研究，该诊所由德克萨斯州圣安东尼奥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。这也是一个大部分人口自我认同为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属的生活，以及使用经过测试的调查工具进行一系列半结构化访谈，样本为160名退伍军人及其家属，以及较小的临床医生和社区成员样本。她还将通过标准检查表、量表和问卷收集数据。我们的目标是了解退伍军人，家庭，临床医生和其他社区成员如何理解军事和平民生活，以及这些理解如何通过种族，男性气质的想法以及PTSD相关或其他心理困扰的水平来塑造。 这项研究将有助于社会科学家的教育。它还将有助于发展社会科学理论，一方面是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。它还将深入了解如何在战斗部署后最好地支持退伍军人及其不同族裔群体的家庭。

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.