Facing the fear: resilience and social support in veterans and civilians with PTSD
| Date | 07 March 2020 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JACPR-11-2019-0455 |
| Pages | 75-85 |
| Published date | 07 March 2020 |
| Author | Charlotte Louise Wall,Michelle Lowe |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care,Criminology & forensic psychology,Aggression,conflict & peace,Sociology,Gender studies,Gender violence,Political sociology,policy & social change,Social conflicts,War/peace |
Facing the fear: resilience and
social support in veterans and
civilians with PTSD
Charlotte Louise Wall and Michelle Lowe
Abstract
Purpose –This study aims to investigate the effectsof resilience and social support on post-traumatic
stressdisorder (PTSD) in a sample of 121 veterans (n= 56) and civilians(n= 65).
Design/methodology/approach –Gender, age and marital status were collected, along with
occupationfor civilians and the unit served with, rank, lengthof time deployed, overall months activeand
location for veterans. The trauma experiences scale for civilians, the PTSD checklist for civilian and
military,Resilience Research Centre’s Adult ResilienceMeasure-28, MultidimensionalScale of Perceived
Social Supportand the Deployment Risk and Resiliency Inventory-2scales were used.
Findings –The results revealed for bothsamples, resilience and social support (except unit support for
veterans) impactedPTSD symptoms. However, social support didnot mediate the relationship between
resilienceand PTSD.
Practical implications –Implicationsfor policy and practice were discussed.
Originality/value –The originality of this research stems from the incorporation of both a civilian and
militarysample by comparing their levels ofPTSD, resilience and social support.
Keywords Resilience, UK, PTSD, Civilians, Veterans, Social support
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has affected military veterans from various wars, from
Vietnam (King et al., 1998,1999), to Iraq and Afghanistan (Pietrzak et al., 2009b). In the UK, an
estimated 3.4 per cent of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from PTSD (Mulligan et al.,
2010). There was less research on veterans of other theatres of war, such as Bosnia and
Northern Ireland.
In comparison to veterans, civilians with PTSD tend to have suffered physical and/or sexual
assault (Breslau et al.,1998;Kilpatrick et al.,2013) and terrorism (DiGrande et al.,2008;
North et al.,2015). Including all civilians and not concentrating on a trauma group (i.e.
domestic violence survivors) allowed for research by demonstrating how the level of trauma
experienced would differ person-to-person and depend overall on what trauma they had
been subjected to (Steenkamp et al.,2012). Some research showed that PTSD was higher
in combat veterans than civilians (Kirz et al.,2001), though other research found no
difference (Gaylord et al., 2009). Due to these mixed results, further research was
warranted.
Previously, resilience had been described as “bouncing-back from adversity”
(Windle, 2011), with the adversity being a traumatic event (Wingo et al.,2017;Pietrzak et al.,
2010). Resilience related to four different sets of resources: psychological, social, biological
and cultural (Southwick et al.,2014), with ethnicity also being an important demographic to
Charlotte Louise Wall and
Michelle Lowe are both
based at the Department of
Psychology, School of
Education and Psychology,
University of Bolton,
Bolton, UK.
Received 14 November 2019
Revised 4 February 2020
Accepted 4 February 2020
DOI 10.1108/JACPR-11-2019-0455 VOL. 12 NO. 2 2020, pp. 75-85, ©Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 1759-6599 jJOURNAL OF AGGRESSION, CONFLICT AND PEACE RESEARCH jPAGE 75
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