In this study, the authors examined the effect of retirement on psychological and physical symptoms in 404 older male veterans who were taking part in an ongoing longitudinal study. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to analyze symptom trajectories from preretirement, peri-retirement, and postretirement periods in veterans with either lifetime full or partial posttraumatic stress disorder (P...

The proposition that declarative memory deficits are systematically related to smaller hippocampal volume was tested in a relatively large sample (n = 95) of U.S. military veterans with and without combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder. This correlative analysis was extended by including multiple measures of verbal and visual declarative memory and multiple memory-relevant regional brain...

Previous research has consistently demonstrated that Prolonged Exposure (PE) therapy is an effective treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Traditionally, PE has been studied and delivered on an individual basis. However, the growing number of Veterans in need of PTSD treatment has led to increased interest in group therapies as an efficient way to provide access to care. The curre...

The purpose of this article is to provide a brief review of group treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This review includes a description of group-based treatments for PTSD and the available data on the efficacy of group treatment for PTSD. The literature review indicates that group treatment for PTSD is efficacious compared with no treatment. However, specific types of group tre...

Emotional numbing (EN) symptoms are an important but poorly understood component of the response to trauma. To try to demonstrate EN, this laboratory study examined subjective and psychophysiological emotion responses to standardized visual stimuli in combat veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), combat veterans without PTSD, and nontraumatized controls. PTSD subjects showed no evi...

Rumination has been suggested to be an important factor maintaining posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Using an analogue design, this study aimed to experimentally test the hypothesis that trauma-related rumination maintains PTSD symptoms. Fifty-one participants were first asked to give a detailed narrative of a negative life event and were then randomly assigned to a rumination or distracti...

As reported in Afifi, Asmundson, Taylor and Jang (2010), lifetime prevalence rates range from 64% to 90% for experiences of trauma and 1.4% to 11.2 % for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Although the majority of the population will be affected by trauma at some point in their life, the impact of these experiences will vary depending on the nature of the trauma, person and family characteri...

Preoccupation with violent fantasies or behavior is often seen in Vietnam combat veterans suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder. Violence in these patients can be understood within the framework of self-psychology as a disintegration product which provides emergency structure for the fragmenting self. A case report illustrates this point.

The present study examined behavioral health outcomes, risk behaviors, aggression, alcohol misuse, marital satisfaction, and attitudes toward reintegration associated with an alternative, front-loaded reintegration strategy compared with a more standardized reintegration process in soldiers returning from combat deployments. The type of reintegration strategy used did not predict differences in...

BACKGROUND The aim of the study was to examine the combined effect of gender and age on post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in order to describe a possible gender difference in the lifespan distribution of PTSD. METHODS Data were collected from previous Danish and Nordic studies of PTSD or trauma. The final sample was composed of 6,548 participants, 2,768 (42.3%) men and 3,780 (57.7%) women...