Psychiatric Disorders in war survivors and its impact on their partners

Background: The rate of psychological disorders is high invictims of war. Limited studies have focused on the impact ofmental disorders on the families of the victims. This paperexamined the psychiatric disorders of war veterans and its impacton the level of health vulnerability among their female spouses.Methods: Interviews were conducted with a nationallyrepresentative sample of 653 of the partners of two group of maleveterans with and without psychiatric disorders. The veterandatabase information used to determine the presence ofPsychiatric disorders. The health and wellbeing of the veteranpartners were assessed via the health related quality of life(HRQOL-SF36) questionnaire.Results: Depression (50.7%) and PTSD (43.9%) were the twomost prevalent disorders in war veterans with psychiatricdisorders. In both partners of injured veterans with (N=333) andwithout psychiatric disorders (N=320), the lowest scores wereobserved in role physical and role emotional. Partners of veteranssuffered from psychiatric disorders had significantly lower scoresin all 8 subscales of SF-36 as well as physical and mentalcomponent summary (P<.001). In the partners of veterans withpsychiatric disorders, morbidity was the most importantpredictor for poor physical and mental health, (OR = 3.06, 95%CI = 1.44 to 6.48, P = .004) and (OR = 2.37, 95% CI = 1.12 to4.99, P = .02), respectively.Conclusion: These findings stressed that psychiatric disordersin veterans have more negative impact on health related qualityof life of their spouses compared to the other conventionalweapon injuries.