Abstract

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5) formally introduced a dissociative subtype of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This study examined the proportion of U.S. veterans with DSM-5 PTSD that report dissociative symptoms; and compared veterans with PTSD, with and without the dissociative subtype and trauma-exposed controls on sociodemographics, clinical characteristics, and quality of life. The National Health and Resilience in Veterans Study (NHRVS) was utilised; this is a nationally representative survey of U.S. veterans. Data were analysed from 1484 veterans who participated in the second assessment (conducted September - October, 2013), which included administration of the DSM-5 version of the PTSD Checklist. NHRVS participants completed a 60-min anonymous web-based survey. The NHRVS sample was drawn from a research panel of more than 80,000 households maintained by GfK Knowledge Networks, Inc., a survey research firm that uses KnowledgePanel®, a probability-based, online non-volunteer access survey panel of a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults that covers approximately 98% of U.S. households. In the current study sample, a total of 1602 adults responded “Yes” to an initial screening question that confirmed veteran status and 1484 participated, resulting in a response rate of 92.6%. To permit generalizability of study results to the entire population of U.S. veterans, poststratification weights were applied based on demographic distributions (i.e., age, gender, race/ethnicity, education, Census region, and metropolitan area) from the most contemporaneous U.S. Census Bureau Current Population Survey (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). Among veterans with PTSD, those with the dissociative subtype reported more severe PTSD symptoms, comorbid depressive and anxiety symptoms, alcohol use problems, and hostility than those without the dissociative subtype.