Background:
The establishment of a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) requires first that the person has actually experienced a traumatic event. The second wave of the Australian Vietnam Veterans Health Study allowed us to observe the consistency of reports of war trauma 30 or more years after the trauma and 15 years after their initial recounting.
Methods:
Interviews were conducted in 2005–2006 with a cohort of randomly selected Australian Army Vietnam veterans who were first assessed using standardized PTSD diagnostic assessments during 1991–1993. A standardized scale was used on both occasions to measure war trauma exposure and to act as a cue to eliciting recalled and reported events that would qualify under the DSM ‘A’ criterion. One or more distressing events were elicited and transcribed for a qualitative analysis of the war stories offered in 2005–2006 and 1991–1993.
Results:
Time 1 to time 2 correlations between each of the 21 items in the combat scale were highly positive, as was the total. The factor structures of the two administrations were very similar, as were item-total correlations and Cronbach's α. Qualitative analysis of stories showed that almost identical stories were told on the two occasions when nominating the ‘worst’ events of Vietnam. However, some of the details emerged over several hours of interviewing, which indicates that veterans may not be as open to disclosing their war histories in short encounters.
Conclusion:
Soldiers' memory for war-related trauma is very stable, even 40 years after war's end.
