Characteristics of posttraumatic stress disorder in ex prisoners of war.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a frequent consequence of surviving the stress of the war. The majority of research studies confirm that the severity, duration and the proximity to the traumatic events have significant influence on the outcome of surviving psychological trauma. There is also evidence that the prisoners of war who have survived severe, repetitive traumatization will develop PTSD more frequently, and that the characteristics and the severity of symptoms is more serious compared with the veterans of war who did not survive imprisonment. This paper analyzes the presence of the symptoms of PTSD according to frequency in a group of former prisoners of war and a group of war veterans who did not experience imprisonment. The research sample is comprised of subjects who were selected by the method of randomized stratified sample and divided an experimental and control group. Experimental subgroup E1 consist of 50 former prisoners of war who have sought psychiatric help after being released from the prisons, and subgroup E2 consist of 50 former prisoners of war who never sought psychiatric assistance. Control group is divided in subgroup K1 that consist of 30 veterans of war who did not survive imprisonment, and who have occasionally sought psychiatric assistance after the war, and subgroup K2 that consist of 30 veterans of war who did not survive imprisonment and who never sought psychiatric assistance. All subjects were male, none of them had any prior psychiatric history. The instruments used in the study were the following: general and sociobiographic questionnaire designed by the authors, traumatic events questionnaire which is a modified version of the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire, PTSD questionnaire designed according to DSM IV diagnostic criteria. Results in relation to degree of traumatic experience demonstrate that there is a significant statistical difference (P<0.005) between the experimental and control group. PTSP is statistically significantly more represented among the former prisoners of war than among the war veterans who were not detained in camps (P<0.05). Average scores for all symptom clusters (fear and helplessness, re-experiencing symptoms, avoidance symptoms, and hyper-arousal symptoms) were higher in the experimental group than in a control group.