The bombing of the Israeli civilian population during the Persian Gulf War offered a unique and important research opportunity to study effects of a life-threatening experience on a sample of Israel-born adults on whom we have detailed pre-war baseline data. These pre-war data were collected in a case/control study of life events and other possible risk factors for psychiatric disorders, especially schizophrenia, major depression, antisocial personality and substance use, including alcoholism. Under a small grant from the NIMH RAPID program, we took the first step to seize this opportunity. We collected post-war data that included not only assessments of psychological distress and symptoms of PTSD, but also extensive measures of the stress process. The respondents were 650 people from our original sample. The interviewing began on March 20, 1991, 3 weeks after the bombing threat ended, and continued for the following year. The RAPID grant provided funds for data collection only. The present application is for funds to analyze the data.
Our aims i n these analyses are to: 1) examine the relationship between objective threat (e.g., residence in targeted and bombed areas) and distress (e.g., demoralization and symptoms of PTSD); 2) test whether the relationships among stress, social situations, personal disposition, and psychopathology in our baseline study of more usual stressors are replicated in a situation of abnormal life threatening stress and, 3) address with prospective analyses questions raised but unresolved with the retrospective data from the baseline case/control study. Our longer term goal is to conduct further follow-up interviews that will be informed by the results of analyses proposed here. This longer term follow-up would involve clinical diagnoses by psychiatrists as in the original baseline study. This would enable us to investigate not only how past social, psychological and psychiatric factors affect immediate responses to a life-threatening experience, but also how such responses, in turn, are related to the future course and development of psychiatric disorders.
