engleski

Marital quality and relationship satisfaction in war veterans and their wives in Bosnia and Herzegovina

PTSD in war veterans and its complex emotional and behavioral characteristics affect the veterans' partners and their partner relationships. Partners of war veterans can also be traumatized by war and develop PTSD. The aim of the study was to explore how posttraumatic stress disorder affects marital quality and satisfaction in wives of war veterans suffering from PTSD. The Harvard Trauma Questionnaire (HTQ) and the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) were applied on 154 war veterans who were treated at Mostar Clinical Hospital in Bosnia and Herzegovina for combat-related PTSD and their wives and 77 veterans who did not suffer from PTSD and their wives. The results showed that wives of PTSD affected veterans had significantly higher scores in all the DAS subscales compared to wives of war veterans without PTSD. Dyadic consensus, dyadic satisfaction, affection expression and marital quality in general are significantly lower in couples where both partners suffer from PTSD compared to couples where only the veteran has PTSD and couples where none of the partners has PTSD. The research found no differences in dyadic cohesion between the couples where both partners suffer from PTSD and couples where only the veteran has PTSD. The results indicate that wives of PTSD affected veterans have low marital quality and face significant problems in marriage that occur in all levels of partner relationship. Partner relationships are even more complex when the wife also suffers from PTSD and marital quality in such cases is even lower.

Key words: PTSD; war veterans; wives; marital quality.

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