The Combat Stress Process: Evidence from the American Soldier Study in World War II

• In Event: 30859 - Mental Health in Crisis: From COVID-19 to Combat

Abstract

Most research on combat exposure and mental health focuses on outcomes not experienced by most soldiers, such as posttraumatic stress disorder and suicide. In contrast, using data from the American Soldier study in World War II (Stauffer et al 1949a), we find that more than 60 percent of combat soldiers in the Pacific Theater in World War II experienced psychological distress above the level that disqualified inductees from military service in 1944. The approximately normal distribution of their symptoms was similar to that found among psychiatric patients. Applying the stress process model to these data, we show that military organization was a contextual stressor that led to psychological distress through multiple channels. Contextual stress was mostly explained by combat exposure and stressors linked to the combat mission. These stressors also undermined, and may have overwhelmed, some potentially ameliorative psychosocial resources. We conclude that psychological distress experienced in wartime may be a primary cause of widespread postwar problems in the lives of veterans; previous research has failed to make this a sustained focus of inquiry.

Authors

• Michael Hughes, Virginia Tech

• Edward J. K. Gitre, Virginia Tech

• K. Jill Kiecolt

• J Micah Roos, Virginia Tech

• Andrew J. Smith, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth