CSF, cerebrospinal fluidIQR, interquartile rangeSPARCS, Statewide Planning And Research Cooperative System.

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Relatively little has been written about the military women who served in Vietnam, and there is virtually no literature on deployed civilian women (non-military). We examined the experiences of 1285 American women, military and civilian, who served in Vietnam during the war and responded to a mail survey conducted approximately 25 years later in which they were asked to report and reflect upon their experiences and social and health histories.We compare civilian women, primarily American Red Cross workers, to military women stratified by length of service, describe their demographic characteristics and warzone experiences (including working conditions, exposure to casualties and sexual harassment), and their homecoming following Vietnam. We assess current health and well-being and also compare the sample to age- and temporally-comparable women in the General Social Survey (GSS), with which our survey shared some measures.Short-term (<10 years) military service women (28%) were more likely to report their Vietnam experience as “highly stressful” than were career (>20 years; 12%) and civilian women (13%). Additional differences regarding warzone experiences, homecoming support, and health outcomes were found among groups. All military and civilian women who served in Vietnam were less likely to have married or have had children than women from the general population, χ2 (8) = 643.72, p < .001. Career military women were happier than women in the general population (48% were “very happy”, as compared to 38%). Civilian women who served in Vietnam reported better health than women in the other groups. Regression analyses indicated that long-term physical health was mainly influenced by demographic characteristics, and that mental health and PTSD symptoms were influenced by warzone and homecoming experiences. Overall, this paper provides insight into the experiences of the understudied women who served in Vietnam, and sheds light on subgroup differences within the sample.

Approximately 8.2 million Americans served in the armed forces during the Vietnam War era, including about 3.3 million who were deployed to Southeast Asia. About 720,000 Blacks and 340,000 Hispanics were in the military during the Vietnam era, with approximately 340,000 and 150,000, respectively, deployed to Vietnam (Kulka et al., 1988). A much smaller number of women, about 265,000, were in the military during the Vietnam era, and it is thought that approximately 11,000 were deployed to Vietnam. The military women primarily served in the Nurse Corps of each branch of the armed services. An unknown number of women also served in Vietnam in other government posts, as well as with nongovernment agencies such as the American Red Cross and the United Service Organizations (History.com, 2011).Although a great deal of attention has been devoted to investigations of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other psychiatric disorders stemming from wartime experiences, there is comparatively little research on