(Press-News.org) DENTON (UNT), Texas -- Military veterans who use avoidant coping strategies -- denying or minimizing distressing thoughts, experiences and emotions -- are more likely to exhibit symptoms of depression and generalized anxiety. However, emotional help and support from family members reduces the negative impacts of these conditions, according to a University of North Texas study on veterans' transition to becoming college and university students.
Counseling and wellness centers at colleges and universities -- where student veterans may seek help -- should therefore have more outreach to veterans' families, including couples counseling, the UNT researchers say.
The VETS, or Veterans Experiencing the Transition to Students project, is directed by Shelley Riggs, UNT associate professor of psychology, and four doctoral students in the UNT Family Attachment Lab. They surveyed 165 veterans who were currently enrolled in one private and two public universities in Texas, including UNT. The majority -- 117 -- had been deployed in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan or Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation New Dawn in Iraq.
The survey respondents represented all military branches, with nearly half serving in the Army and more than 83 percent being non-commissioned officers.
In addition to being asked about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and other psychological symptoms, the student veterans responded to questions about their academic, emotional, personal and social adjustment to college, coping styles, social support and romantic relationship functioning, as well as their sense of being connected to their universities.
Fourth-year doctoral student Daniel Romero focused on the student veterans' coping strategies. Avoidant coping strategies, he said, appear to interfere with the veterans' successful adaption and psychological functioning in a school setting. He noted that avoidant coping can often be adaptive in military settings, where traumatic reactions must be suppressed to continue a mission.
"However, in the civilian world, ignoring difficult emotions and stressful events in counterproductive and can contribute to intrusive thoughts and other PTSD symptoms, and depression and anxiety symptoms," Romero said.
Veterans who used problem-focused coping, which involves identifying problematic stress and taking steps to resolve or overcome it, reported significantly lower levels of depression and generalized anxiety symptoms -- but only if they also reported high levels of emotional support from family members, Romero said. He noted, however, that this emotional support didn't affect levels of PTSD symptoms, which he said usually results from traumatic events, such as military combat, rather than other circumstances that could lead to depression and anxiety.
Romero's study will be published in an upcoming issue of Journal of Counseling Psychology and is currently available through the American Psychological Association's Online First Publications.
In other findings from the VETS project:
Data from only the student veterans who had been deployed showed that, surprisingly, the 25.6 percent of the veterans who reported PTSD symptoms also reported positive academic adjustment. One possible explanation, says fifth-year doctoral student Robyn Campbell, who analyzed the data, "is that studying and other school tasks requiring focused attention are part of an attempt to avoid distressing thoughts and reduce intrusive recollections of the trauma."
"If that is the case, then avoidance may actually facilitate successful adaption in a college setting," says Campbell, a Navy veteran. She noted that only hyperarousal symptoms of PTSD -- sleep disturbances, tension and being easily startled -- directly interfere with studying and completing class assignments. This type of hypervigilance about their surroundings "may make sitting in lecture halls particularly difficult" for veterans, which may distract them from absorbing information presented in class, she said.
Generalized anxiety symptoms, including restlessness and worry, also contribute with poor academic performance, Campbell said.
The student veterans reported more relationship distress than civilian students and more likely to be married or in committed relationship. However, secure attachment -- a relationship style that results in a person being comfortable with closeness and asking for help from others -- was linked to better relationship adjustment and fewer symptoms of anxiety, depression and PTSD. Secure attachment was also linked to better academic, social and personal and emotional adjustment to college and greater sense of being connected to universities.
Results from the study were presented at the 2014 Texas Psychological Association and the American Psychological Association annual conventions.
INFORMATION:
The health benefits of the Mediterranean diet are well-known. As well as being healthier, a recent article concludes that the menu traditionally eaten in Spain leaves less of a carbon footprint than that of the US or the United Kingdom.
The consequences of climate change range from species extinction to sea-level increases and the spread of diseases. For this reason, researchers have been struggling for years to alleviate its effects, even limiting the pollution caused by food consumption.
A new study involving the University Hospital Complex of Huelva, Jaume I University ...
For most children with HIV and low immune cell count, cells rebound after treatment
Study led by UCLA doctor finds t-cell level returns to normal with time
Most children with HIV who have low levels of a key immune cell eventually recover levels of this cell after they begin treatment, according to a new study conducted by researchers at UCLA and other institutions in the U.S. and Brazil.
The researchers were funded by the National Institutes of Health.
"We were pleased to find that the vast majority of children experience immune system recovery with effective ...
(SALT LAKE CITY) -- In a novel study, University of Utah (U of U) researchers have shown that hypobaric hypoxia (the reduced oxygen experienced at high altitude) can lead to depression.
In the March 2015 edition of High Altitude Medicine and Biology online, the U of U researchers and a colleague from Tufts University show that female rats exposed to high-altitude conditions, both simulated and real, exhibit increased depression-like behavior. Male rats, interestingly, showed no signs of depression in the same conditions.
"The significance of this animal study is that ...
Despite declines in the number of youths who smoke cigarettes, hookah or water pipe use continues to rise among Canadian youth, a new study from the University of Waterloo reports. Published Monday in Cancer Causes and Control, the study found that almost one in four high school seniors try smoking hookah.
The study estimates that more than 78,200 youth are current water pipe users.
"While we can celebrate a continued slow decline in cigarette use across the country, water pipes are bucking the trend," said Leia Minaker, a scientist at the Propel Centre for Population ...
Straw-powered cars could be a thing of the future thanks to new research from the University of East Anglia (UEA).
A new study pinpoints five strains of yeast capable of turning agricultural by-products, such as straw, sawdust and corncobs, into bioethanol - a well-known alcohol-based biofuel.
It is estimated that more than 400 billion litres of bioethanol could be produced each year from crop wastage.
The research team say that their findings could help to create biofuel which is more environmentally friendly and ethically sound than other sources because it would ...
When a man is diagnosed with localised prostate cancer, he usually faces a range of treatment options, from active surveillance to radiation therapy or surgical removal of the prostate. The patient's personal values and preferences should be key in this choice: Is curing the cancer the only thing that matters or should he also consider a variety of quality of life issues, such as avoiding incontinence or erectile dysfunction?
The frequent difficulty in determining the prognosis of localised prostate cancer complicates matters. Many men have low risk prostate cancer ...
Undisturbed ecosystems can be resistant to changing climatic conditions, but this resistance is reduced when ecosystems are subject to natural or anthropogenic disturbances. Plants are particularly sensitive to climatic changes in early life stages and even small climatic changes can cause vegetation shifts when ecosystems are disturbed by fires, insect outbreaks or other disturbances.
This is the conclusion from one of the world's longest running climate change experiments conducted by the European network INCREASE, involving scientist from several European countries ...
This news release is available in Spanish. IMikel Bravo-Acha's PhD thesis has focussed on the applications of optical fibre as a sensor. In the course of his research, conducted at the NUP/UPNA-Public University of Navarre, in the laboratory he monitored a sensor fitted to optical fibre 253 kilometres away. "What is interesting is that the measurement was remote, all the information arrived through the fibre and we didn't need to fit any sockets to power the sensor. This would be very useful, for example, to monitor an oil pipeline crossing the desert where fitting ...
CORAL GABLES, Fla. (March 26, 2015) - The field of autism research has tried to find a central theory underlying brain changes associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Now, a new study shows that individuals with the disorder exhibit different patterns of brain connectivity, when compared to typically developing (TD) individuals and that these patterns adjust as the individual ages.
"Our findings suggest that developmental stage must be taken into account to accurately build models that show how the brains of individuals with autism differ from neurotypical individuals," ...
CINCINNATI - Shakespeare said "to be or not to be" is the question, and now scientists are asking how life forms grow to be the correct size with proportional body parts.
Probing deeply into genetics and biology at the earliest moments of embryonic development, researchers at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center report March 26 in Nature Communications they have found new clues to explain one of nature's biggest mysteries. Their data from fruit flies show the size and patterning accuracy of an embryo depend on the amount of reproductive resources mothers invest ...
