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Reconciling disparate prevalence rates of PTSD in large samples of US male Vietnam veterans and their controls

BACKGROUND: Two large independent studies funded by the US government have assessed the impact of the Vietnam War on the prevalence of PTSD in US veterans. The National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study (NVVRS) estimated the current PTSD prevalence to be 15.2% while the Vietnam Experience Study (V...

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Autores principales: Thompson, William W, Gottesman, Irving I, Zalewski, Christine
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2006
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1476696/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16670009
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-244X-6-19
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author Thompson, William W
Gottesman, Irving I
Zalewski, Christine
author_facet Thompson, William W
Gottesman, Irving I
Zalewski, Christine
author_sort Thompson, William W
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Two large independent studies funded by the US government have assessed the impact of the Vietnam War on the prevalence of PTSD in US veterans. The National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study (NVVRS) estimated the current PTSD prevalence to be 15.2% while the Vietnam Experience Study (VES) estimated the prevalence to be 2.2%. We compared alternative criteria for estimating the prevalence of PTSD using the NVVRS and VES public use data sets collected more than 10 years after the United States withdrew troops from Vietnam. METHODS: We applied uniform diagnostic procedures to the male veterans from the NVVRS and VES to estimate PTSD prevalences based on varying criteria including one-month and lifetime prevalence estimates, combat and non-combat prevalence estimates, and prevalence estimates using both single and multiple indicator models. RESULTS: Using a narrow and specific set of criteria, we derived current prevalence estimates for combat-related PTSD of 2.5% and 2.9% for the VES and the NVVRS, respectively. Using a more broad and sensitive set of criteria, we derived current prevalence estimates for combat-related PTSD of 12.2% and 15.8% for the VES and NVVRS, respectively. CONCLUSION: When comparable methods were applied to available data we reconciled disparate results and estimated similar current prevalences for both narrow and broad definitions of combat-related diagnoses of PTSD.
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spelling pubmed-14766962006-06-13 Reconciling disparate prevalence rates of PTSD in large samples of US male Vietnam veterans and their controls Thompson, William W Gottesman, Irving I Zalewski, Christine BMC Psychiatry Research Article BACKGROUND: Two large independent studies funded by the US government have assessed the impact of the Vietnam War on the prevalence of PTSD in US veterans. The National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study (NVVRS) estimated the current PTSD prevalence to be 15.2% while the Vietnam Experience Study (VES) estimated the prevalence to be 2.2%. We compared alternative criteria for estimating the prevalence of PTSD using the NVVRS and VES public use data sets collected more than 10 years after the United States withdrew troops from Vietnam. METHODS: We applied uniform diagnostic procedures to the male veterans from the NVVRS and VES to estimate PTSD prevalences based on varying criteria including one-month and lifetime prevalence estimates, combat and non-combat prevalence estimates, and prevalence estimates using both single and multiple indicator models. RESULTS: Using a narrow and specific set of criteria, we derived current prevalence estimates for combat-related PTSD of 2.5% and 2.9% for the VES and the NVVRS, respectively. Using a more broad and sensitive set of criteria, we derived current prevalence estimates for combat-related PTSD of 12.2% and 15.8% for the VES and NVVRS, respectively. CONCLUSION: When comparable methods were applied to available data we reconciled disparate results and estimated similar current prevalences for both narrow and broad definitions of combat-related diagnoses of PTSD. BioMed Central 2006-05-02 /pmc/articles/PMC1476696/ /pubmed/16670009 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-244X-6-19 Text en Copyright © 2006 Thompson et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Thompson, William W
Gottesman, Irving I
Zalewski, Christine
Reconciling disparate prevalence rates of PTSD in large samples of US male Vietnam veterans and their controls
title Reconciling disparate prevalence rates of PTSD in large samples of US male Vietnam veterans and their controls
title_full Reconciling disparate prevalence rates of PTSD in large samples of US male Vietnam veterans and their controls
title_fullStr Reconciling disparate prevalence rates of PTSD in large samples of US male Vietnam veterans and their controls
title_full_unstemmed Reconciling disparate prevalence rates of PTSD in large samples of US male Vietnam veterans and their controls
title_short Reconciling disparate prevalence rates of PTSD in large samples of US male Vietnam veterans and their controls
title_sort reconciling disparate prevalence rates of ptsd in large samples of us male vietnam veterans and their controls
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1476696/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16670009
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-244X-6-19
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