User:Sibella-hallward/sandbox

Military experience
The physical trauma soldiers may face when serving in combat has been proven to increase the risk of developing PTSD.

Schnurr, Lunney, and Sengupta[19] identified risk factors for the development of PTSD in Vietnam veterans. The subjects were 68 women and 414 men of whom 88 were white, 63 black, 80 Hispanic, 90 Native Hawaiian, and 93 Japanese American. The ethnicities of the female subjects were not specified. Among their findings were:

Hispanic ethnicity, coming from an unstable family, being punished severely during childhood, childhood asocial behavior, and depression as pre-military factors War-zone exposure, peritraumatic dissociation, depression as military factors Recent stressful life events, post-Vietnam trauma, and depression as post-military factors

The racial similarity between Hispanic and Vietnamese soldiers, and the discrimination Hispanic soldiers faced from their own military, made it difficult for Hispanic soldiers to dehumanize their enemy. Hispanic veterans who reported experiencing racial discrimination during their service displayed more symptoms of PTSD than Hispanic veterans who did not.

Schnurr, Lunney, and Sengupta also identified certain protective factors, such as:

Japanese-American ethnicity, high school degree or college education, older age at entry to war, higher socioeconomic status, and a more positive paternal relationship as pre-military protective factors Social support at homecoming and current social support as post-military factors.[36] Other research also indicates the protective effects of social support in averting PTSD or facilitating recovery if it develops.[37][38]

Glass and Jones found early intervention to be a critical preventive measure:[39]

PTSD symptoms can follow any serious psychological trauma, such as exposure to combat, accidents, torture, disasters, criminal assault and exposure to atrocities or to the sequelae of such extraordinary events. Prisoners of war exposed to harsh treatment are particularly prone to develop PTSD. In their acute presentation these symptoms, which include subsets of a large variety of affective, cognitive, perceptional, emotional and behavioral responses which are relatively normal responses to gross psychological trauma. If persistent, however, they develop a life of their own and may be maintained by inadvertent reinforcement. Early intervention and later avoidance of positive reinforcement (which may be subtle) for such symptoms is a critical preventive measure.

Studies have shown that those prepared for the potential of a traumatic experience are more prepared to deal with the stress of a traumatic experience and therefore less likely to develop PTSD.[5]

PTSD is under-diagnosed in female veterans. Sexual assault in the military is a leading cause for female soldiers developing PTSD; a female soldier who is sexually assaulted while serving in the military is nine times more likely to develop PTSD than a female soldier who is not assaulted. A soldier's assailant may be her colleague or superior officer, making it difficult for her to both report the crime and to avoid interacting with her assailant again. Until the Tailhook scandal drew attention to the problem, the role that sexual assault in the military plays in female veterans developing PTSD went largely unstudied.