A study of the Trauma Symptom Inventory for select Vietnam veterans

This study included 131 male Vietnam veterans between the ages of 40 and 65 years whose files were provided by the external investigator (Jerry Barnett) assigned by Base Camp, Inc., for this study. The study looked at veterans on five different trauma scales of the Trauma Symptom Inventory (Dissociation (DIS), Anxious Arousal (AA), Anger/Irritability (AI), Tension Reducing Behavior (TRB) and Intrusive Experience (IE) Scales), based on types of discharge and combat status. The two types of military discharge are honorable or dishonorable, and two types of combat status are combat or non-combat. A multi-level analysis was used comparing type of discharge and combat status to the five trauma scales previously identified. Veterans who did not meet the criteria for services as identified through the Department of Veterans Affairs were excluded from previous research studies of combat versus non-combat utilizing the diagnostic criteria of PTSD because dishonorably discharged veterans did not quality for services through the Department of Veterans Affairs. This study demonstrated that there were main effects in combat status and discharge type; however, there were no interaction effects detected on any of the TSI scales with the exception of the disassociation scale which did show a statistically significant interaction effect at the.05 level