Impact of Life Event Stress among Military Personnel Fighting Boko-Haram Insurgency in North Eastern Nigeria: Any Relationship with Psychological Skills?

Abstract

Psychological Skills Techniques (PST) can minimize the impact of traumatic life event stress but the underlying mechanism of this occurrence has not been fully explored. This study aimed to elucidate the relationship between psychological skills techniques (Social supports, avoidance of destructive-thought, positive self-talk, emotional strength, relaxation skill) and the impact of traumatic life events experienced by Nigerian soldiers deployed to combat Boko-Haram insurgency in North Eastern Nigeria. We used Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) and Psychological Skills questionnaire (ß=89) to collect data from 146 purposively drawn soldiers from operation “Lafiya Doye”. Our findings show that of the 146 respondents 72.0% experienced recurrent recollections of dreams; 65.0% had physiological reactivity trauma cues, 82.0% had avoidance of trauma related actions, while 62.0% of participants experienced diminished interest in important activities. In addition, the major source of stress for the soldiers was physical violence (78%). In the regression model, it was observed that an increase in the psychological skills will statistically decrease the impact of life event stress experienced by the respondents.  Further, result from ANOVA shows that the composite effect of the predictor variables on the criterion variable was statistically significant (F (5,140) =248.369, p<0.05). In terms of magnitude, social support (ß=0.099, t=2.460, p<0.05) was most potent in predicting the impact of life event stress among the solders. We concluded that Psychological Skills Training (PST) can be effectively utilized to reduce the impact of exposure to traumatic life event stress on soldiers deployed to fight Boko-Haram insurgency in North Eastern Nigeria.