Mental Health in Spouses of Iraq-Iran War Veterans With PTSD

Abstract

Background: Mental challenges are among the most frequent complications of wars, afflicting individuals directly or indirectly involved in military confrontations. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is one of the most common disorders in such situations. Objectives: Our goal is to assess mental health of spouses of Iraq-Iran war veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, two groups of the spouses of the veterans, 40 cases diagnosed with PTSD as the case group and 40 cases who were not, as the control group, were enrolled into the study and compared. Mental health was assessed using the general health questionnaire (GHQ-28) which has four major domains including somatic symptoms, anxiety and insomnia, depression, and social malfunction. Results: Twenty-two patients (55%) in case group and 11 patients (27.5%) in control group had impaired general health status (P < 0.05, P value = 0.02). Nineteen patients (47.5%) in case group and 9 patients (22.5%) in control group complained of somatic symptoms (P value = 0.001). Anxiety and insomnia (45% vs. 22.5%) (P value = 0.002) and depression (47.5% vs. 25%) (P value = 0.008) were more common in the case group. Conclusions: Although imposed Iran-Iraq war ended 25 years ago, we observed that spouses of veterans with PTSD have more somatic complaints and poorer mental health compared to spouses of veterans without PTSD. Further studies seem essential regarding proper management and provision of psychology consultation services along with medical treatments to raise mental health of their spouses.