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It Transforms All Of You: Lived Experiences Of Partners Of Iraq Combat Veterans With Traumatic Brain Injuries, Laurel Sue Cassidy

Doctoral Dissertations

Just over two million service men and women have been deployed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past ten years. Conservative estimates suggest that nearly one fifth of those deployed sustain a blast induced mild traumatic brain injury (TBI). Nearly half of those in the service are married, meaning a large number of spouses unexpectedly find themselves navigating a “new normal” after their partner returns from combat with ongoing sequelae from a TBI.

Ultimately, a sizeable number of spouses of Iraq combat veterans with TBIs have found themselves in the role of caregiver. The large majority of …

Invisibly Wounded Warriors: The Psychological Repercussions Of War On American Soldiers, Maisy Bragg

Honors Theses

The demands that come with war can be both physically and mentally traumatizing and damaging to the soldier in many ways. These psychological injuries manifest themselves in what physicians call Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. The purpose of this paper is to examine Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in American Soldiers by analyzing the training methods, human’s natural aversion to killing, pre-deployment medical exams, type of warfare, and treatment options provided in war; specifically the Civil War, World War I and World War II, Vietnam, and the Iraq War. By taking into account the history of PTSD as a disease, as well as these …

An Investigation Of The Role Of Experiential Avoidance In Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Meaghan M. Lewis

Honors Theses

Experiential avoidance is a construct that researchers have proposed as a possible mediating factor between psychopathology and a prior history of traumatic events. Among the traumatic events investigated in the research literature, experiential avoidance has demonstrated correlations with prior experiences of sexual victimization. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and PTSD symptoms have also been linked with incidence of sexual victimization and engaging in experiential avoidance. Another variable commonly associated with this construct is problematic alcohol consumption. The present study presumed that women with a history of sexual victimization would report high PTSD symptoms, a stronger likelihood of partaking in problem drinking, …

Coping As A Mediator Between Proximity To Violence In Juarez, And Ptsd Symptoms Among College Students Attending A University On The Texas - Mexico Border, Francis Javier Reyes

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The present study directly examined whether proximity to ongoing violence might lead to symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in a sample of students attending a border university less than a mile from the US Mexico border. Exposure to violence is a common cause of PTSD symptomology. Prior research in the region suggests that ongoing traumatic stress due to the violence in Juarez is associated with increased PTSD symptomology. Because coping skills are thought to protect individuals from PTSD the Transactional Model of Stress and Coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) guided the study. The purpose of this study was to …

The Role Of Rejection Sensitivity In Posttraumatic Stress Disorder; A Pilot Investigation, Grace Kiriakos

Dissertations and Theses

"The aim of this secondary data analysis is to explore the hypothetical relationship between rejection sensitivity (RS) level and PTSD symptom severity. We predicted that RS would be positively related to PTSD symptom severity. Pilot data from 39 individuals were analyzed to explore bivariate correlations on indices of RS, PTSD symptom severity, depression symptoms, and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) feature endorsement. RS was positively related to PTSD symptom severity at the trend level. Participants were then divided into a group of trauma-exposed individuals and control individuals. Independent samples t-tests were conducted to evaluate mean differences between groups in terms of …