Religious coping, trait forgiveness, and meaning as protective barriers for soldiers

This study is the first to examine the potential moderating effects of positive and negative religious coping, trait forgiveness, and meaning in military duties on the identified link between combat exposure and subsequent symptoms of generalized psychological distress and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD; Adler, Vaitkus, & Martin, 1996; Kaylor, King, & King, 1987).The sample included 366 U.S. Army soldiers who were currently deployed to Iraq. Due to the much smaller number of women in the sample (n = 43 vs. n = 323 men), the primary analyses testing for moderation were conducted for men only. The findings showed that none of the study variables directly moderated the relation between combat exposure and subsequent symptoms of distress and PTSD (p \u3e .007). Significant main effects did emerge with negative religious coping accounting for an additional 4.7% of the variance, trait forgiveness accounting for an additional 13.3% of the variance, and meaning in military duties accounting for an additional 13.6% of the variance in psychological distress. Neither combat exposure nor positive religious coping significantly predicted symptoms of more generalized distress. For symptoms of PTSD, combat exposure significantly accounted for an additional 6.8% of the variance, positive religious coping accounted for an additional 1.4% of the variance, negative religious coping accounted for an additional 2.2% of the variance, trait forgiveness accounted for an additional 3.3% of the variance, and meaning in military duties accounted for an additional 2.5% of the variance in PTSD scores