Distress in spouses of service members with symptoms of combat-related PTSD: Secondary traumatic stress or general psychological distress?

Keith D. Renshaw · Elizabeth S. Allen · GALENA KLINE RHOADES · Rebecca K. Blais · Howard J. Markman · Scott M. Stanley

100 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Family Psychology

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Research Traumatic Brain Injury Research Migration, Health and Trauma

Abstract

Combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is linked with elevated psychological distress in service members'/veterans' spouses. Researchers use a variety of terms to describe this distress, and recently, secondary traumatic stress and secondary traumatic stress disorder (STS/STSD) have become increasingly commonly used. Although STS/STSD connotes a specific set of symptoms that are linked to service members'/veterans' symptoms, researchers often use general measures of distress or generically worded measures of PTSD symptoms to assess STS/STSD. To determine how often scores on such measures appear to be an accurate reflection of STS/STSD, we examined responses to a measure of PTSD symptoms in 190 wives of male service members with elevated levels of PTSD symptoms. Wives rated their own PTSD symptoms, and then answered questions about their attributions for the symptoms they endorsed. Fewer than 20% of wives who endorsed symptoms on the PTSD measure attributed these symptoms completely to their husbands' military experiences. Moreover, compared with wives who attributed symptoms only to events in their own lives, wives who attributed symptoms completely or partially to their husbands' military experiences had a greater overlap between some of their responses on the PTSD measure and their responses to a measure of general psychological distress. These results suggest that most wives of service members/veterans with PTSD experience generic psychological distress that is not conceptually consistent with STS/STSD, although a subset does appear to endorse a reaction consistent with this construct. Implications of these findings for intervention and research with this vulnerable population are discussed.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 100 citations exist upstream.

References

2013Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 1995The structure of negative emotional states: Comparison of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS) with the Beck Depression and Anxiety Inventories 1995Manual for the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales. 2 1998Psychometric properties of the 42-item and 21-item versions of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales in clinical groups and a community sample.1980Tests for comparing elements of a correlation matrix.2008Validating the Primary Care Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Screen and the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist with soldiers returning from combat.1995Compassion fatigue as secondary traumatic stress disorder: An overview.1992Problems in families of male Vietnam veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder.

Cited by

2017The Role of PTSD in Bi-directional Intimate Partner Violence in Military and Veteran Populations: A Research Review

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.