Examination of Differences in the Clinical Presentation of Veterans with Combat-related and Military Sexual-related Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Abstract

The primary goal of this study was to examine the psychodiagnostic properties of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2) F-2-8 profile as well as the clinical cutoff scores on the PK and PS scales for PTSD assessment in a sample of U.S. military veterans with PTSD diagnoses related to combat experience and how they differ from those veterans with PTSD diagnoses identified as survivors of military sexual trauma. This study used a retrospective archival design to access and analyze MMPI-2 profiles of veterans drawn from the VA Informatics and Computing Infrastructure (VINCI). This study had three independent variables, PTSD diagnosis, gender, and trauma type, which had three levels: combat trauma (n = 4,339), military sexual trauma (n = 2,083), and no trauma identified (n = 23,085). Results showed that all three PTSD measures analyzed (PK, PS, F-2-8) were statistically effective at differentiating PTSD diagnosed from non-PTSD diagnosed veterans. In addition, the F-2-8 profile showed significantly higher elevations for veterans with PTSD who are survivors of MST compared to veterans with combat PTSD and veteran controls. However, when veterans with PTSD were split by gender, male survivors of MST showed significantly higher elevations on all three measures compared to male combat veterans, while there were no significant differences between MST and combat for females on any of the three measures. However, the large sample size in this study resulted in insignificant or small effect sizes, with the F-2-8 profile performing the best of all measures from an effect size perspective. This means the results of this study should be interpreted with caution, as they may not represent large differences in observed results for these groups and measures. Further areas for study and implications of these findings for treatment of veterans in the VA system are also explored.