The Impact of Soldiers’ Deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan: Secondary Traumatic Stress in Female Partners

Abstract

Research traditionally has focused on the development of symptoms in those who experienced trauma directly but has overlooked the impact of trauma on the families of victims. More recently, researchers have begun to examine how individual exposure to traumatic events affects the spouses/partners of trauma survivors. The current study reports data from male Army soldiers who recently returned from a deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan and their spouses/partners. The results indicated that increased trauma symptoms in the soldiers significantly predicted traumatic stress symptoms in the female partners, particularly soldiers’ avoidance symptoms. Areas for future research and clinical implications also are identified.