Gender Differences in the Expression of PTSD Symptoms among Active Duty Military Personnel

This study examined gender differences in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and symptom clusters in the total U.S. active duty force. Data were drawn from the 2008 Department of Defense Survey of Health Related Behaviors among Active Duty Military Personnel and based on 24,690 individuals: 17,939 men and 6,751 women from all services at 64 installations worldwide. The results indicated that women expressed more symptom distress than men across almost all the individual PTSD symptoms except for hypervigilance. Women also had significantly higher scores on all four PTSD Checklist, Civilian Version (PCL-C) factors examined, including Re-experiencing, Avoidance, Emotionally numb, and Hyperarousal. More women than men were distressed by combat experiences that had involved some type of hurt, such as being wounded, witnessing or engaging in acts of cruelty, engaging in hand-to-hand combat, and, to a lesser extent, handling dead bodies. Men who had been sexually abused had a greater number of symptoms and were consistently more distressed than women on both individual symptoms and symptom clusters. Gender differences were a predictor for the Emotionally numb factor in which men had higher scores after controlling for other demographics, combat experiences, sexual abuse history, and substance abuse. This study found that gender differences in PTSD symptoms of military personnel are both dependent on the type of trauma (combat vs. sexual abuse) experienced, the kind of combat exposures experienced, and the time when sexual abuse took place (before vs. after joining the military).