Defending Against PTSD with Love Letters

Scientists at the University of Denver have found that male soldiers with high marital satisfaction show less symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder upon their return, if their spouses send them letters, e-mail or care packages during deployments to the battlefield.

Conversely, the same was not true for active soldiers with low levels of marital satisfaction. More attention from their spouses was correlated with an increase in the frequency of PTSD symptoms.

In this research, which covered 193 married male Army soldiers, it was found that these handy forms of delayed communication were a powerful defense against the onset of this debilitating condition.

One of the most interesting aspects of this work is that “interactive” forms of communication, such as for example phone calls and instant messaging, did not have the same protective effect as indirect communications did. More studies are needed in order to understand why this happens.

“We think this means that when soldiers are maritally dissatisfied, communication with their wives during deployment may be less positive and doesn’t provide soldiers with social support that can help protect against PTSD symptoms,” Ben Loew believes.

The study coauthor is a a PhD student in psychology at the University of Denver. “We think that letters, which happened less often overall compared to phone calls, had stronger effects,” the expert explains.

“:When you receive letters, they can be read again and again, and when you write them, it can be therapeutic,” he goes on to say. The data collected by this research could be very helpful for the Army, as it's struggling to reduce the number of soldiers it loses to this condition.

Many warfighters have their mental health severely impaired after serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, and are therefore incapable of returning to the battlefield. In addition, they also find it hard to function properly within society once they return home.

Depression is one of the most common symptoms, and this can lead to putting a strain on marriages, or other interpersonal relationships, PsychCentral reports. Communications between soldiers and their wives could therefore be controlled, so that warfighters' mental health is preserved upon their return.

Details of the new study appear in a paper published in the latest issue of the Journal of Traumatic Stress.