Women warriors at no greater risk for PTSD than men, study finds

While past research on the question has been mixed, a new study by Defense and Veterans Affairs researchers suggests that women in the military are at no greater risk than men for developing posttraumatic stress disorder, given similar experiences--including combat.

The findings are in the September 2015 Journal of Psychiatric Research.

The study involved active-duty troops and veterans who are part of the Millennium Cohort Study. That effort has more than 200,000 participants in all.

The new PTSD study included more than 2,300 pairs of men and women who were matched based on an array of variables - including combat exposure - and followed about seven years, on average.

"This is the first study to prospectively investigate the development of PTSD in male and female service members who were matched on multiple important characteristics that could explain some of the differences in PTSD, including military sexual trauma," says one of the authors, Dr. Shira Maguen. "We found no gender differences in the development of PTSD. Consequently, our focus should be on the types of traumatic experiences that people have been exposed to, rather than any inherent gender differences in the development of PTSD."

Maguen is the mental health director of the OEF/OIF Integrated Care Clinic and a staff psychologist at the San Francisco VA Medical Center. She's also an associate professor at UCSF Medical School.

Lead author on the study was Dr. Isabel Jacobson of the Naval Health Research Center in San Diego.

All the men and women in the study were free of PTSD at the outset of the research, and they all deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan at least once. They completed a baseline survey in 2001 - 2003, and follow-up surveys in 2004 - 2006 and 2007 - 2008.

While female troops in general are less likely to see combat, the researchers selected the study sample so there would be equal numbers of men and women with combat experiences. This was in addition to the pairs of men and women in the study being matched on factors such as age, race, education, marital status, service branch, and military occupation and pay grade.

The researchers also sought to match them on various health characteristics, including alcohol misuse, anxiety, and depression. Another factor the researchers took into account was stressful life events: divorce, a violent assault, or the death of a family member.

The matching technique helped ensure like-to-like comparisons. For example, while women service members are far more likely than men to experience sexual assault, the study matched men and women on this basis too, ensuring equal numbers of such events in each matched pair. The study also took into account sexual assaults that may have occurred over the follow-up period, during or after military service.