engleski

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Croatian War Veterans ; Incidence and Psychosocial Features

The paper examines the incidence of post- traumatic stress disorder in a sample of 3217 Croatian war veterans, and the influence of different features of pre-war, wartime and post-war status of the respondents on the onset of the disorder. Based on the results of two different instruments used (Mississippi Combat Scale and Watson PTSD Interview), 25% war veterans were classified in the “partial PTSD” category (the disorder diagnosed on 1 instrument). whereas 16, 22% were denoted as “true PTSD” (the disorder diagnosed on both instruments administered. Although the PTSD incidence in veteran population is primarily ascribed to exposure to war stressors, recent studies highlight the importance of pre-war, war-time and post-war psychosocial features (family stability, family relations, social life, possible alcohol and drug use) in onset and development of the disorder. Therefore, in the second part of the research respondents with comparable number of war stressors experienced were singled out from the basic sample, and categorized into three groups: “no PTSD”, “partial PTSD” and “true PTSD”. Differences in pre-war, war-time and post-war status features among the three sub-groups were examined by discriminative analysis, which revealed the influence of the pre-war connative status and social functioning of war veterans on the onset of PTSD, as well as on the onset of acute and chronic health problems in veteran population during and after the war.

PTSD; Croatian war veterans; incidence; features

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