Follow-up study of British military hostages and their families held in Kuwait during the Gulf War

Bisson, Jonathan Ian ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5170-1243, Searle, Margaret M. and Srinivasan, Michael 1998. Follow-up study of British military hostages and their families held in Kuwait during the Gulf War. British Journal of Medical Psychology 71 (3) , pp. 247-252. 10.1111/j.2044-8341.1998.tb00989.x

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

On 2 August 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait and held hostage all its inhabitants. Amongst those forced to stay were 71 British servicemen and their families who were held hostage for up to four and a half months. This study investigated the mental health status of this group of individuals at 6 and 18 months after the final hostage was released. Participants completed the Impact of Event Scale and the 28-item version of the General Health Questionnaire at both 6 and 18 months. In addition they completed a questionnaire regarding background factors, the dimensions of the trauma and the effects of their hostage experience. The Impact of Event Scale scores changed little over time whereas the General Health Questionnaire scores reduced significantly (p = .001) over the 12-month period suggesting that despite ongoing intrusive and avoidance phenomena levels of psychological distress did reduce. Those variables most strongly associated with a poor psychological outcome were witnessing physical violence and perceived deterioration in physical and mental health. Poor outcome at 6 months was strongly correlated with poor outcome at 18 months.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Medicine MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics (CNGG)
Subjects:	R Medicine > R Medicine (General)
Publisher:	Wiley-Blackwell
ISSN:	0007-1129
Last Modified:	24 Oct 2022 11:20
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/47791

Citation Data

Cited 13 times in Scopus. View in Scopus. Powered By Scopus® Data

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item