Posttraumatic Stress Disorder among Female Vietnam Veterans: A Casual Model of Etiology.

VIETNAM; UNITED States

The article presents a study which aims to investigate the etiological roles of both war and sexual trauma in the development of chronic posttraumatic stress disorder among female Vietnam veterans. Historically, women in the military have been treated unequally relative to men. For years, there were no studies of the stresses of military service for women. Then women who served in the Vietnam theater as nurses started to report their traumatic experiences and distress. These personal accounts were broadened by surveys of women veterans in which an empirical association was demonstrated between exposure to the death and dying of combatants and the development of psychological disorders. For the most part, however, these reports gave limited attention to the role of sexual traumatization. More recent reports suggest that sexual traumatization in the military is more common than was previously supposed and may be of major importance to the etiology of posttraumatic stress disorder. This study used the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study database to develop a causal model of the etiology of chronic posttraumatic stress disorder among female veterans that addressed the role of sexual and war traumas.