An examination of the roles of trauma exposure and posttraumatic stress disorder on emotion regulation strategies of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation New Dawn veterans

AbstractTheories of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) implicate emotional processes, including difficulties utilizing adaptive emotion regulation strategies, as critical to the etiology and maintenance of PTSD. Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation New Dawn (OIF/OEF/OND) veterans report high levels of combat exposure and PTSD. We aimed to extend findings suggesting that emotion regulation difficulties are a function of PTSD, rather than combat trauma exposure or common comorbidities, to OIF/OEF/OND veterans, in order to inform models of PTSD risk and recovery that can be applied to returning veterans. We tested differences in emotion regulation, measured with the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale and Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, among trauma-exposed veterans with (n = 24) or without PTSD (n = 22) and healthy civilian comparison participants (n = 27) using multivariate analyses of covariance, adjusting for major depressive disorder, anxiety disorders, and demogra...