More than military sexual trauma: Interpersonal violence, PTSD, and mental health in women veterans

Abstract

Military sexual trauma (MST) is reported by 20-40% of female veterans. The purpose of this study of female veterans referred for MST treatment was to examine the relationships between lifetime trauma (physical, sexual, and psychological) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, physical health, and quality of life using retrospective cross-sectional data from medical records. Of the 135 participants, 95.4% reported at least one trauma in addition to MST, most notably sexual abuse as adult civilians (77.0%) and as children (52.6%). PTSD, depression, and sleep difficulty rates were clinically significant. Chronic pain (66.4%) was associated with childhood abuse, physical health, sleep difficulties, and coping. Integrating mental and physical health treatment is necessary to treat MST and PTSD in female veterans.

Impact of childhood maltreatment on physical health-related quality of life in U.S. active duty military personnel and combat veterans

“…Childhood abuse, particularly non-sexual abuse including physical abuse, psychological abuse, and the cumulative amount of abuse, has been found to be related to physical HRQoL (Afifi et al, 2007;Lang et al, 2008) and chronic pain (Kelly, Skelton, Patel, & Bradley, 2011). In our study PTSD and depression both mediated the relationship between overall physical HRQoL and childhood maltreatment, and at the level of the subscales, PTSD and depression mediated the relationship between childhood maltreatment and Bodily Pain, Role-Physical Functioning, and Social Functioning.…”

Adverse Childhood Experiences and Adult Health Outcomes Among Veteran and Non-Veteran Women

“…27.6%, p < 0.001), and sexual abuse (touched sexually: 24.4% vs. 14.1%, p < 0.001; made to touch another sexually: 14.8% vs. 9.8%, p = 0.025; forced to have sex: 10.0% vs. 5.7%, p = 0.024). Additionally, a significantly greater proportion of women veterans reported both family dysfunction and abuse (34.3% vs. 26.8%, p = 0.034) and had a higher mean ACE score (p = 0.003) than women non-veterans (Table 1).…”

“…26 Other limitations of current literature on ACEs among veteran women include the primary focus on sexual abuse, the use of convenience samples, and a lack of a non-veteran comparison group, limitations which the current study adresses. 27,28 Unlike other studies examining the association between ACEs and military service, 2,25 the focus of this study was specifically on women veterans: those who had served in, and separated from, military service. The purposes of the present study were to document the prevalence of ACEs among women veterans compared with women non-veterans, assess a range of physical and mental health outcomes among women veterans and non-veterans, and determine the role of ACEs in health differences among veteran and non-veteran women.…”

Military-related sexual assault in Canada: a cross-sectional survey

“…We also could not determine, among those with military-related sexual assault, how much, if any, nonmilitary-related sexual assault they had experienced, which is especially important given the role that prior sexual assault may play in subsequent assault. 19,20 Moreover, because the sociodemographic information was collected at the time of the interview, we could not determine whether variables such as marital status or region were risk factors for militaryrelated sexual assault at the time of occurrence. Finally, the low prevalence of military-related sexual assault among men precluded any analysis of its risk factors or associations with Note: CI = confidence interval, OR = odds ratio, PTSD = posttraumatic stress disorder.…”