Following Desert Storm: The Impact on Men and Women
By Jessica Wolfe, Ph.D. & John Kelley, B.S.
NCP Clinical Quarterly 3(1): Winter, 1993
The abrupt conclusion of the Persian Gulf War in March of 1992 offered a unique opportunity to consider the implications of modern war-time deployment on a volunteer army. In conjunction with Chaplain (LTC) William Mark of Ft. Devens, Massachusetts, we instituted a survey that investigated a broad spectrum of exposure and adjustment paramenters related to deployment during the war. This survey, entitled "The Desert Storm Reunion Survey," was administered to nearly 3,000 military personnel returning through Ft. Devens from April-July, 1991. Distributed within five days of soldiers' return to this country, the survey is probably one of the earliest - and most systematic - attempts to quantify and detail various components of the Desert Storm experience as it relates to male and female veterans.
To date, most war-related research in this country has been carried out long after veterans have left the war-zone and returned to their home settings. In the majority of instances, research has relied on retrospective reports that are likely to reflect the dual influence of time and intervening life events. In many cases, it is difficult to carefully evaluate the impact of those events. Thus, the actual nature and effect of more immediate wartime stressor exposure has been difficult to gauge. By surveying military personnel before they returned home, this survey hoped to circumvent some of these difficulties by carefully and quickly evaluating exposure to a wide range of war-related stressors, enabling investigation of their impact on patterns of adjustment.
Initial review of our sample showed that it contained 2659 men and 220 women. Consistent with the vastly changed nature of women's roles in the military, no significant gender differences were obtained on variables assessing exposure to more traditional combat activities nor on a checklist of warzone exposure items expanded for use with Operation Desert Storm. As expected, overall combat exposure levels for the total sample were modest, with only 14.7% of men and 11.9% of women indicating combat exposure at levels that would be classified as moderate or high. Since responses of survey participants typically reflect the nature of questions used, we asked returnees to provide open-ended descriptions of their most stressful event during the deployment period. Using this format, 76.3% of men and 79.5% of women reported that war-zone activities (versus domestic stressors) were the most distressing, suggesting relative comparability between the two groups. However, when more refined analyses were conducted on these data (i.e., all reported stressor events were collapsed into supraordinate categories reflecting a variety of combat and domestic events), a greater percentage of women than men described exposure to potentially lifethreatening combat activities as their primary stressor. Thus, further examination of actual and perceived exposure is required.
Men and women also differed to some degree on their responses to war-zone deployment experiences in general. Men and women indicated some differences in their perceptions of levels of initial preparedness (75.2% male vs. 60.9% female as "quite or extremely well prepared") and of satisfaction with personal performance (84.1% male vs. 77.8% female as "quite or extremely satisfied"). In terms of symptom measurement, women overall had significantly higher mean Mississippi Scale scores and greater elevations on the Global Severity Index of the Brief Symptom Inventory, suggesting a number of generalized and stress-related symptoms. Furthermore, more women than men exceeded previously established clinical cut-offs on both of these measures. Findings on these two instruments were substantiated by information from other variables tapping stress phenomena (e.g., a PTSD checklist), where women endorsed significantly more symptom characteristics.
A number of important caveats pertain to these preliminary findings. First, women in this sample differed significantly from men in distinctive ways: Women were younger in age, less likely to be married, and served at a lower rank at the time of deployment. In other studies of civilians, background variables of these types (e.g., age, marital status) have been shown to influence adjustment and may effect rates of PTSD in individuals exposed to other forms of life trauma. Furthermore, data on stressors in the present survey point to potential differences in stressor exposure despite the seemingly equivalent levels obtained on checklists. Other analyses showed that type of military status or service (i.e., active duty, Reserve, National Guard) was also a factor in terms of some of the findings described here, suggesting the need for considering a variety of situational and predeployment factors. Finally, longer-range followup is needed to determine the broader reliability of findings described here. Further analyses will help clarify the degree to which gender, and gender-related features, are elements truly associated with the adjustment to war-time stress. These data should help clinicians better understand the process of recovery following this type of significant life event.
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