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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
This study explored the factors to which a sample of Portuguese war veterans attributed their recovery
from posttraumatic symptoms related to their war experiences. Participants were a sample (n 60) of
war veterans with mental sequelae of the Portuguese Colonial war: 30 suffered from chronic PTSD
(unrecovered) and 30 veterans with remission from PTSD (recovered). Two individual semistructured
interviews were conducted. Analysis of the interviews was conducted using the Thematic and Categorical
Analysis. Six themes were identified to which participants attributed their recovery: war zone stressors,
stressful life events, mental and coping strategies, self-integration in personal schemas of morally
incongruent experiences, self-awareness of mental states, and perceived social support. Recovered
participants showed higher occurrence of integration of the morally incongruent events within existing
personal schemas, self-awareness of mental states, and use of problem focused coping. Unrecovered
participants showed higher occurrence of lack of self-awareness of mental states, use of acting out
strategies and lack of social support. The authors discussed that reconciliation of morally discrepant
experiences in their self- and relational-schemas, and development of higher self-awareness of their own
mental states can play a pivotal role in recovery from PTSD among war veterans.
Description
Keywords
Assimilation Moral injury PTSD Remission War trauma
Citation
Traumatology, Advance online publication, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/trm0000019
Publisher
American Psychological Association