Are All Relationship Issues Caused by PTSD?
Some research suggests that assortative mating tends to occur among those with mental health disorders. That is to say, they enter relationships with people who also have mental health problems. This could account for the relationship problems within families where a member has PTSD. However, research has also found that the spouses of veterans with PTSD do not differ significantly on a variety of sociodemographic and background characteristics compared to the spouses of veterans without PTSD. This suggests that PTSD is the cause of these relationship problems. Similarly a number of background variables have been shown to contribute to the development of PTSD. These variables, which include childhood behavioural problems and psychiatric disorders, childhood residential instability, early childhood family disruption, quality of parental relationships, frequency of parental affection, parental violence and abuse, and criminal, psychiatric and substance abuse problems of family members, m
