Problems at Home

Even more interesting were the remaining soldiers, about 13 percent of the subjects in the study, whose stress seemed to ease during deployment. That is, they had significant stress symptoms, such as major anxiety and frequent nightmares, after signing up for service but before deploying—symptoms that eased in the first months of war, only to spike again later, when they were safely at home. This pattern has never been observed before, and it seems puzzling: Why would shipping off to a dangerous and unfamiliar war zone ameliorate stress symptoms?

The scientists have a theory, and it has to do with the root causes of PTSD, previously undocumented. As compared with the resilient Danish soldiers, all those who developed PTSD were much more likely to have suffered emotional problems and traumatic events prior to deployment. In fact, the onset of PTSD was not predicted by traumatic war experiences but rather by childhood experiences of violence, especially punishment severe enough to cause bruises, cuts, burns and broken bones. PTSD sufferers were also more likely to have witnessed family violence and to have experienced physical attacks, stalking or death threats by a spouse. They also more often had past experiences that they could not, or would not, talk about.

These previously overlooked PTSD sufferers whose stress actually diminished in the war zone were also much less educated than the resilient soldiers. This disadvantage, combined with their pronounced mental health problems before going to war, suggests that they may in reality have been escaping a different war zone: the family. In other words, they showed improvement as soldiers only because they were in such poor psychological condition in civilian life. Army life—even combat—offered them more in the way of social support and life satisfaction than they had ever had at home. These soldiers were probably benefiting emotionally from being valued as individuals for the first time ever and from their first authentic camaraderie—mental health benefits that diminished after they once again returned to civilian life.

This article was originally published with the title Embattled Childhood: The Real Trauma in PTSD.

(Further Reading)

Peace and War: Trajectories of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms before, during and after Military Deployment in Afghanistan. Dorthe Berntsen, Kim B. Johannessen, Yvonne Thomsen, Mette Bertelsen, Rick Hoyle and David Rubin in Psychological Science (in press).

6 Comments

1. 1. rshoff 11:59 AM 11/21/12

   Sounds right to me. PTSD begins in childhood. I wonder though, is it an active process where the illness begins in childhood ripe for rupture when faced with further trauma in adulthood? Or is it a passive process due to the failure of acquiring coping skills in a violent or neglectful environment during childhood consequently leaving a deficit when faced with trauma in adulthood?

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2. 2. sjn 01:00 PM 11/21/12

   It's not clear how many people were actually deployed - there is reference to 270 (Brits or Danes?) and 746 In either case, over 6 months the only reported casualty is one injury by a roadside bomb?!
   This doesn't seem like a comparable exposure to more engaged US troops. Can you really say anything more than that previous high stress outweighed the actual combat stress in contributions to PTSD? Wouldn't you need a more rigorous study where combat levels of stress were more significant? The fact that no one without previous very high stress situations developed PTSD is claimed to be proof that combat stress didn't cause PTSD - how can we rule out that the stress levels experienced by this regiment were not sufficient to lead to significant PTSD?

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3. 3. EBark 08:43 PM 11/21/12

   This article is so fascinating as it relates to my hypothesis about cortisol reactivity and baby brains and attachment disorders with child abuse. I have been researching this since last year and it is all related. The mind is connected to the body and the emotions and the touch we receive as children whether they are touched with negative reinforcement or positive. It is all we can do to prevent child abuse now. It is a perpetuating cycle. I think it also leads to bipolar disorders in adults.

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4. 4. Army veteran 07:53 PM 11/22/12

   The study has flaws as it is only on one group of soldiers from a single country. The Danes may be subject to more childhood violence than some other countries and as such this has a major impact on the study. The other point I like to raise is how long were these members in combat? Were they subject to the same long periods of combat as experienced in Vietnam? Civilians in Vietnam were born into a war and many experienced 30 or more years of traumatic events. I can verify that very little child abuse happened and many suffer from PTSD. I am a veteran married to a Vietnamese wife and both have witnessed war and tragic events and both of us come from a well adjusted family without any child abuse. Finally this type of study is dangerous as it depicts people wrongly and it has not been done over a wide sector of the community, it was only compared to a group of Danish soldiers and is too small to make any substantial accurate statements on PTSD.

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5. 5. ChrisSciAm in reply to Army veteran 01:37 PM 11/23/12

   I completely agree. Further, 13 percent of subjects had significant anxiety and nightmares before deploying. That is, that had psychology issues prior to combat. So what does this have to do with PTSD? If you want to say that childhood traumas can manifest themselves as psychological problems resembling PTSD when individuals undergo stressful situations, that makes sense. I don't see how this proves a relation between the two. This is just bad science.

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6. 6. bongobimbo 07:53 PM 11/23/12

   Yeah, yeah. And baloney. I'm a 12-year Navy noncombatant woman veteran who resigned because of the horrors of Vietnam and what it was doing to so many combat-destroyed friends, and I'm an active member of 3 peace veteran groups and a peace grandmothers' group. I know many, too many, vets, even elders of WWII and Korea, who still suffer badly from PTSD. This sounds to me like some clunkhead in the Danish VA who's trying -- yet again, endlessly! -- to blame the VICTIM. For God's sake, PTSD sufferers need help, not dredging up what may be an exaggerated "troubled" childhood! My dad came from the most disfunctional family I ever heard of--and he grew up to be one of the mildest, kindest, most non-neurotic adults who ever had a crowded funeral service in Iowa that drew hundreds of old friends from New England, Virginia, Florida and California. But that MAY have been because WWI ended a few weeks after he got to boot camp at Great Lakes, so he never got aboard a ship that was torpedoed by a submarine of the Kaiser, never at the age of 19 had to tread water and watch his friends burn to death or drown! People who write articles like this, or smug psychologists who conclude that combat traumas have little to do with PTSD, should be sent to Afghanistan for about 6 months. Maybe they'd learn a little humility. I AM ANGRY AND SORROWFUL THAT MY FRIENDS AND COMRADES IN ARMS COULD BE SO MALIGNED!

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