Depression, anxiety, and stress in partners of Australian combat veterans and military personnel: A comparison with Australian population norms
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
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Abstract
Partners of Australian combat veterans are at an increased risk of experiencing mental health problems. For a comparative analysis of mental health of partners of veterans with that of their non-military counterparts, the study sample comprised female partners of (a) Australian combat veterans (Sample 1: n = 282, age M = 60.79, SD = 5.05), (b) a random sub-sample of partners of Australian combat veterans from the previous sample (Sample 2: n = 50; M = 60.06, SD = 4.80), (c) partners of Special Air Services Regiment (SASR) personnel (Sample 3: n = 41, age M = 34.39 SD = 7.01), and (d) partners of current serving military (non-SASR) personnel (Sample 4: n = 38, age M = 32.37, SD= [i]6.20). Respondents completed measures to assess their reported levels of depression, anxiety, and stress. The two samples (Samples 1 and 2) for partners of Australian combat veterans reported significantly poorer symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress than the comparative population norms. The sample of SASR personnel partners reported significantly greater levels of depression and anxiety, while the sample with non‑SASR personnel partners reported a significantly poorer symptomatology in stress than the comparative norms. Lessons and protective factors can be learnt from groups within the current military as to what may assist partners and families to maintain a better level of psychosocial health.
Cite this as
2016. Depression, anxiety, and stress in partners of Australian combat veterans and military personnel: A comparison with Australian population norms. PeerJ Preprints 4:e1876v2 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1876v2note This preprint is not peer-reviewed. You may wish to reference the subsequent peer-reviewed version of this article.
Author comment
Deployment percentages and numbers updated. Short title changed to better reflect the manuscript.
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Competing Interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Author Contributions
Gail V MacDonell conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper, prepared figures and/or tables, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Navjot Bhullar conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper, prepared figures and/or tables, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Einar B Thorsteinsson conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper, prepared figures and/or tables, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Human Ethics
The following information was supplied relating to ethical approvals (i.e., approving body and any reference numbers):
Human Research Ethics Committee, University of New England, approval number HE09/151
Data Deposition
The following information was supplied regarding data availability:
The relevant datasets have been made available privately to the reviewers through figshare. The datasets will be made available publicly through figshare depending an ethics application to release the data.
Funding
The authors received no funding for this work.