The veteran population, about 18.5 million Americans in 2016 (US Census Bureau, 2018), is particularly at risk for mental health problems. As an example, the suicide rate of veterans is about one and a half times higher than the general population (US Department of Veteran Affairs [DVA], 2018b). Another group...
Purpose of the Study: We tested a life-span model of combat exposure on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms in later life, examining the direct and indirect effects of prewar, warzone, and postwar factors.
Design and Methods: The sample included 947 male World War II and Korean War veterans from the...
We examined how the experiences of World War II and Korean War veterans,
including prewar, warzone, and postwar factors, affected PTSD symptoms in later life.
This dissertation consists of two studies. In Study 1, four different hypotheses from a
lifespan approach were examined (King et al., 1996): stress evaporation (only...
Previous research on WWII veterans in their 70’s and 80’s has shown that positive and negative appraisals of military service mediate between combat exposure and PTSD symptoms in late life. This thesis extends this research in two ways, first by determining how these variables relate to functional health in later...
Unconditioned responding (UCR) to a naturally aversive stimulus is associated with defensive responding to a conditioned threat cue (CS+) and a conditioned safety cue (CS-) in trauma-exposed individuals during fear acquisition. However, the relationships of UCR with defensive responding during extinction training, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom severity, and fearful...
Studies on the positive effects of stress, called stress-related growth (SRG), are increasing, and there are a variety of contradictory theoretical models and findings in the literature. This dissertation compared several of these models in two studies, using two waves of data from the Davis Longitudinal Study, a study of...
The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the effects of war stressors and psychosocial factors on negative and positive mental health outcomes among Korean Vietnam War veterans. The sample consisted of 367 male veterans who completed a self-reported survey conducted in 2017 (Mage = 72, SD = 2.66, range...
Composition scholars who have written about trauma have typically focused on creating classrooms that are conducive to healing and learning. In doing this work, however, they have considered neither how PTSD nor other people’s responses to it can impact one’s perceived rhetoricity in the college classroom. In other words, they...
The purpose of this study was to examine how fearful and self-conscious shyness subtypes are related to shame, dissociation, and PTSD following traumatic experiences. We hypothesized self-conscious shyness, characterized by feelings of embarrassment and fear of public scrutiny, to be related to symptoms of high betrayal. We predicted fearful shyness,...
The emergence of high explosives on the battlefield can be defined both literally and figuratively as a seismic event in the landscape of modern warfare. High explosives first came into common use in war in 1914. By the end of World War I just four years later, more than 2.5...