The Influence of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder on Health Functioning in Active‐Duty Military Service Members

Abstract

Researchers have suggested that posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with significant healthcare burden and utilization of medical services. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of PTSD symptoms on health functioning among active-duty military personnel. Participants in the study were 366 treatment-seeking service members who had returned from deployment and were participating in a larger PTSD treatment study. Assessments included measures of PTSD symptom severity, combat experiences, life stress, health functioning, alcohol use, and depression. We hypothesized that at baseline, PTSD severity and its symptom clusters would be significantly associated with poorer physical and mental health functioning. We conducted separate hierarchical multiple regressions to examine the predictive contribution the hypothesized factors would have on the variance in physical and mental health scores. Consistent with previous literature, we found that PTSD severity was significantly associated with poorer mental health functioning, B = -0.25, SE = 0.08, β = -0.15, t(342) = -3.07, R = .37, p = .002; however, contrary to our hypotheses, PTSD severity was not associated with poorer physical health functioning. Further, the hyperarousal symptom cluster was significantly associated with poorer physical health functioning, B = -0.83, SE = 0.26, β = -0.18, t(340) = -3.16, R = .11, p = .002, but not mental health functioning. Limitations of our study included the use of self-report measures only and lack of objective measures. Future directions for study include examination of how health functioning perceptions change over a longer duration of PTSD symptoms and after treatment.

Trajectories of functioning in a population-based sample of veterans: contributions of moral injury, PTSD, and depression

“…More specifically, some studies have found that PTSD and depression equally impact functioning (e.g. disability in older veterans; Smith et al, 2020 ), PTSD impacts functioning more than depression (educational functioning in student veterans; Morissette et al, 2019 ), or depression impacts functioning more than PTSD (physical health functioning in service members; Asnaani et al, 2018 ). Future studies are needed to better understand which types of functioning are most impacted by depression.…”

Positive impact of IPS supported employment on PTSD-related occupational-psychosocial functional outcomes: Results from a VA randomized-controlled trial.

“…As noted by McCaslin and colleagues (2016), the research on the relationship between severity of PTSD symptoms and impairment in functioning is mixed, with some, but not all, studies demonstrating an association between these variables. For example, a recent study of treatmentseeking service members found that PTSD severity was significantly associated with lower mental health functioning on the Veterans RAND 12-item Health Survey, whereas PTSD severity was not associated with worse physical health functioning (Asnaani et al, 2018), contrary to other research (Possemato, Wade, Andersen, & Ouimette, 2010). In addition, functioning can continue to be impaired even after a reduction or resolution of PTSD symptoms, suggesting that ameliorating symptoms may not be sufficient to effectively improve functioning (Bryant et al, 2016).…”

The efficacy of 90-min versus 60-min sessions of prolonged exposure for PTSD: A randomized controlled trial in active-duty military personnel.

“…Keywords: PTSD, prolonged exposure therapy, military, trauma, non-inferiority Supplemental materials: https://doi.org/10.1037/ccp0000739.supp Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) affects an estimated 7% of the population (Kessler et al, 2017), with higher rates among certain groups, including active-duty military personnel and veterans (Judkins et al, 2020). As PTSD severely impacts functioning (Asnaani et al, 2018;Creamer et al, 2011;Forbes et al, 2019), access to evidence-based treatment is imperative. Prolonged exposure (PE) therapy (Foa et al, 2007(Foa et al, , 2019) is an evidence-based treatment for PTSD with demonstrated efficacy across numerous populations, including military personnel (Foa et al, 2018;Peterson et al, 2019).…”