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Elevated rates of current PTSD among Hispanic veterans in the NVVRS: True prevalence or methodological artifact?
Author(s) -
LewisFernández Roberto,
Turner J. Blake,
Marshall Randall,
Turse Nicholas,
Neria Yuval,
Dohrenwend Bruce P.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
journal of traumatic stress
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.259
H-Index - 134
eISSN - 1573-6598
pISSN - 0894-9867
DOI - 10.1002/jts.20329
Subject(s) - posttraumatic stress , clinical psychology , psychiatry , vietnam war , psychology , persistence (discontinuity) , medicine , demography , geotechnical engineering , sociology , political science , law , engineering
Abstract The elevated rate of current posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among Hispanic Vietnam veterans has been attributed to culturally based expressiveness that inflates symptom self‐reports. To investigate this possibility, the authors conducted three hypothesis‐driven analyses with National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study (NVVRS) data from the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM‐III‐R (SCID‐) diagnosed subsample of male Vietnam Theater veterans ( N = 260). First, persistence of the Hispanic elevation after adjusting for war‐zone stress exposure initially suggested the effect of greater expressiveness. Second, symptom‐based analyses isolated this effect to the self‐report Mississippi Scale for Combat‐Related PTSD and not to the clinician‐rated SCID interview. Third, objective measures of functioning did not reveal a unique Hispanic pattern of lower impairment associated with current PTSD. These tests suggest that greater Hispanic expressiveness does not account for the Hispanic elevation in current PTSD in the NVVRS SCID‐diagnosed subsample.