The role of emotional functioning in military-related PTSD and its treatment
Section snippets
Participants
A total of 81 male participants diagnosed with military-related PTSD completed the assessment materials prior and subsequent to their participation in a specialized Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center intensive day treatment program for PTSD. Their mean age was 52.83 years (S.D. = 6.17), and they were predominantly Caucasian (89%; 9% African-American; 1% American Indian/Alaskan; 1% missing data). About equal proportions of the participants were married (35%) or divorced (31%), while the
Cross-sectional relationships
Correlational analyses revealed significant overlap between depressive symptoms and state anxiety (r = .26, P < .05) as well as depressive symptoms and total PTSD symptoms (r = .47, P < .05). Depressive symptoms were significantly correlated with all PTSD symptom clusters as well, including re-experiencing (r = .50, P < .05), avoidance/numbing (r = .25, P < .05), and hyperarousal (r = .34, P < .05). However, as shown in Table 1, emotion regulation and fear of losing affective control were not consistently
Discussion
This study investigated the relationships among PTSD, depressive symptoms, state anxiety, emotion regulation, and affective control, both cross-sectionally and across PTSD treatment. The initial step of examining the bivariate relationships among the variables revealed substantial overlap between symptoms of depression and anxiety as well as between symptoms of depression and PTSD. Overlap among these variables is not surprising given the similarity in people's reporting of their experiences of
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by a Career Development Award to the second author from the VA Cooperative Studies Program. This material is also the result of work supported with resources and the use of facilities at the National Center for PTSD and White River Junction VA Medical and Regional Office Center, White River Junction, VT.
We would like to thank the veterans willing to contribute to this research effort. We would also like to thank staff of the PTSD Day Hospital Program, and especially
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