This week, we are shifting gears from Natural Sciences to Social Sciences. To start this transition, I wanted to talk about something in social sciences that interests me. My father works as a psychologist for the government. A psychologist studies behavior provides help people how need to change negative behaviors. Since my dad works for the government, he specializes in the area that I want to talk about today, posttraumatic stress disorder.
Posttraumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, deals with a constant remembrance of a certain negative event or events, such as war. These recollections can be in the form of dreams. This disorder has a big impact on the people it affects. Their ability to connect with the outside world decreases a lot. Relationships between these soldiers and their loved ones have decreased because of this disorder. Other symptoms include trouble sleeping and memory trouble.
Most of research done concerning PTSD focuses on war veterans. Researchers have argued on the exact number, but some studies say PTSD affects 25% of war veterans while some have estimates as high as 40-60%. Scientists hypothesize that the level of combat time increases the likelihood of PTSD. Social support, or comfort from a friend or loved one, helps this disorder occur less frequently.
A study conducted by Barrett and Mizes sought to prove this hypothesis with veterans of the Vietnam War. They hypothesized that those with high combat time would have more PTSD symptoms than low-combat veterans. In addition, they thought that veterans with higher levels of social support would show fewer symptoms than veterans with low levels.
They tested this hypothesis by interviewing 13 veterans from four different experimental groups. They sorted them by High Combat- Low Support, High Combat-High Support, Low Combat-Low Support, and Low Combat-High Support. They questions that they asked fit into four different scales. The Figley’s Combat Severity Scale is the most commonly used scale to measure PTSD. The researchers also developed two scales, the social support scale, which measures how much support the veteran received during his trip home, and the Premorbid Adjustment Scale, which measured if they were involved in other activities that could have triggered the PTSD. The last scale they used was the Hopkins Symptom Checklist, which also helps to measure levels of PTSD. Some questions they asked the veterans included:
Do you sometimes feel that you should have died in Vietnam?
Do loud noises irritate you or do sudden movements or noises make you jump?
Do you have dreams of specific war-related experiences?
They used these questions, and others, combined with their levels of support to see whether social support led to lowered levels of PTSD.
As they predicted, veterans who had high combat levels reported more PTSD symptoms than veterans with low levels of combat did. In addition, as predicted, veterans who had high levels of social support reported fewer PTSD symptoms than those with low levels of social support. Their study confirms other studies previously done. These researchers entered a debate that to me seems pretty one sided. The evidence that they used to back up their study all seemed to show the same information that they concluded from their study. The backward search of his resources seems to confirm these researchers original prediction.
I am glad I can share with you something that really interests me. PTSD is something that affects many veterans as well as their families and loved ones. However, using this study as an example, it looks like social support can lead to lowered chances of PTSD showing up in veterans.
Fun Links:
Combat Level and Social Support in the Development of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Vietnam Veterans by Terence W. Barrett and J. Scott Mizes. http://bmo.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/12/1/100
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