title: Intimate relationships among returning soldiers: the mediating and moderating roles of negative emotionality, PTSD symptoms, and alcohol problems.
abstract: Research examining relationship quality among combat veterans largely focuses on the role of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with less attention devoted to other correlates of PTSD and relationship quality, such as personality and problematic drinking. In a sample of combat-exposed National Guard soldiers recently returned from Iraq (N = 308), we examined (a) a meditational pathway from negative emotionality, to elevated postdeployment PTSD symptoms, to poorer relationship quality; and (b) the moderating role of problematic drinking. Moderated mediation regression strategies supported the mediating role of postdeployment PTSD symptoms, but not the moderating role of problematic drinking on soldiers' relationship quality. Findings suggest negative emotionality creates a vulnerability to more severe early postdeployment PTSD symptoms and poorer early postdeployment relationship quality.
authors.affiliation: Center for Chronic Disease Outcomes Research, Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Medical Center, One Veterans Drive (116A6), Minneapolis, MN 55417, USA.
authors.forename: Laura A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Meis
authors.forename: Christopher R
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Erbes
authors.forename: Melissa A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Polusny
authors.forename: Jill S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Compton
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000437:Alcoholism; D003625:Data Collection; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D054542:Iraq War, 2003-2011; D008297:Male; D008889:Military Personnel / Q000523:psychology*; D009341:Negativism; D017008:Negotiating; D013313:Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic / Q000503:physiopathology*; D055815:Young Adult