As we have discussed in previous conversations, you know that I have always been
passionate about human behavior, especially during adulthood and among military
veterans and people who have experienced significant crises and traumas in their
lives. In this particular area, I’m always wondering, and searching for answers
regarding questions like; why some veterans react in different ways even when they
experienced same traumatic situations and living similar lives and circumstances?
For this matter, how life’s crises affect people in different ways? What is the
chemistry, cognitive skills and personality of people who commit acts of violence to
other people or who harm themselves? Being a veteran myself and seeing during
many years different behaviors on people who underwent same past traumatic
situations and having similar current lives, it is my empiric point of view that there are
deeper factors affecting people’s behaviors than the actual mere traumatic event.
I would like to share with you two recent professional research articles that I found
valuable on this area from peer-reviewed journals containing these two key terms:
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and life, these articles bring new insight to my
point of view about different and critical factors that impact veterans’ behaviors other
than the traumatic event.
Vujanovic et al. (2022) conducted their research focusing on determining the
association of distress intolerance (DI) and anxiety sensitivity (AS) with PSTD and
substance (alcohol & drug) use among military veterans. Their study included 120
military veterans, primarily male (98.3%) with a mean age of i = 41.41 and standard
deviation of SD = 10.77. The data was collected as part of their intake evaluation
during their psychological services to a PTSD and substance use disorder (SUD)
specialty clinic from 2016 to 2019 by mental health clinicians. A 5-point Likert-type
scale was using to measure the following variables of interest: PTSD checklist for
DSM-5 (PCL-5), alcohol use disorder identification test (AUDIT), drug use disorder
identification test (DUDIT), distress intolerance index (DII), and the anxiety sensitivity
index-3 (ASI-3). And the analysis of the data was done using SPSS version 26;
determining means, standard deviations, distributions, and zero-order correlations.
The asymmetric bootstrapping mediation procedures were used to test the two
separate hypothesized models, finding that PTSD symptom severity was related to
alcohol use severity via AS, but not DI, and vice versa, PTSD symptom severity was
related to drug use severity via DI, but not AS. These results were partially consistent
with the hypotheses of this research and brough a new insight in my view about
factors that affect life’s behavior, in this case alcohol and drug use based on distress
intolerance and anxiety sensitivity.
The second research was conducted to determine prediction of future intimate
partner violence (IPV) among soldiers and veterans based on neurocognitive
performance, participating 217 couples; warzone veterans and partners (Chiu et al.,
2022). The data collected was done from 6-8 years prior and post deployment
leveraging the Neurocognition Deployment Health Study (NDHS) where surveys
assessed traumatic brain injury (TBI) history, PTSD, depression, alcohol use,
neurocognitive performance, and IPV perpetration. Regression analyses were used as
statistical test finding that PTSD, depression, problematic alcohol use, TBI, education
and age considerably contributed to psychological IPV perpetration, but not physical.
Additionally low postdeployment neurocognitive performance predicted higher
psychological and physical IPV perpetration. Chiu et al. (2022) results partially
supported this research first hypothesis: health factors predict psychological but not
physical IPV perpetration; but support the second hypothesis about neurocognitive
performance predicting psychological and physical IPV perpetration. i i i i i
Both articles deeply strengthened my understanding of the field of PTSD, life’s crises
impact, and military people and veterans’ behaviors based on other very important
factors that surround their lives which supported my opinion and call for deeper study
in this area to understand the immense opportunities to help this sample population.
I am very interested to hear from you about any comments and further thoughts in
this area. Perhaps this area can benefit from your expertise and experience. i
References
Chiu, C., Gnall, K., Pless Kaiser, A., Taft, C. T., Franz, M. R., Lee, L. O., & Vasterling, J. J.
(2022). Neurocognitive performance predicts future partner violence among U.S. Iraq-
and Afghanistan-deployed Army soldiers and veterans. Psychology of Violence.
https://doi.org/10.1037/vio0000408
Vujanovic, A. A., McGrew, S. J., Walton, J. L., & Raines, A. M. (2022). Posttraumatic
stress and substance use among military veterans: Associations with distress
intolerance and anxiety sensitivity. Addictive Behaviors, 126, 107177.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2021.107177
