1. Psychological distress and communication quality in military couples after deployment to war
- Author
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Cheuk Hei (Bosco) Cheng, Na Zhang, Yoav Lavee, Abigail H. Gewirtz, and Osnat Zamir
- Subjects
Adult ,Male ,Military Family ,PsycINFO ,Anxiety ,Psychological Distress ,Article ,Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic ,Interpersonal relationship ,medicine ,Humans ,Interpersonal Relations ,Longitudinal Studies ,Spouses ,General Psychology ,Psychological distress ,Middle Aged ,Distress ,Military Personnel ,Software deployment ,Female ,medicine.symptom ,Psychology ,Military deployment ,Clinical psychology - Abstract
Previous research has found elevated levels of psychological distress (i.e., posttraumatic stress, depressive and anxiety symptoms) among veterans. Existing theory and evidence show how psychological distress is associated with marital disruptions. Only a few studies, however, have tested the link between psychological distress and couple communication quality in military couples, most of which were cross-sectional and employed self-report measures. The current study investigated whether psychological distress predicts changes in observed communication quality across 1 year in 228 couples consisting of male service members, who were deployed to Iraq and/or Afghanistan, and their nondeployed female partners. Psychological distress was indicated by self-reported posttraumatic stress disorder, depressive, and anxiety symptoms. Communication quality was assessed using observed couple interactions. The results of an actor-partner interdependence model showed that men's psychological distress predicted men's lower communication quality at one year after accounting for baseline communication quality. Women's psychological distress did not predict their communication quality, and each partner's psychological distress did not predict changes in their partner's communication quality over time. Consistent with previous findings on civilian populations, our findings highlight the long-term effects of psychological distress among service members on their communication behaviors with their intimate partners, and emphasize the importance of targeting psychological symptoms of service members following deployment to war. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
- Published
- 2020