Certain psychological characteristics of soldiers injured in the 1991–1993 war in Croatia

Abstract

To describe the level of neuroticism and alexithymia of traumatised soldiers and the impact of psychosocial context on the experience of traumatising injury and personality, MMPI subscales Hypochondriasis (Hs), Depression (D), Hysteria (Hy) and Alexithymia (Al), Post-Traumatic Symptom Scale, IOES-15 for Intrusive subset and Avoidance subset and a revised version of CIDI-PTSD interview were used. Active non-injured soldiers and non-disabled soldiers scored significantly higher on Hysteria and Depression than permanently disabled soldiers and healthy controls. No significant differences between the groups were found on Hypochondriasis, Alexithymia, PTSS, Impact of Event Scale. Specific psychosocial context, apprehension of the trauma and the anticipation and fear of new trauma seem to have a stronger impact on the injured soldiers than the injury itself.