Fellowship project explores PTSD's effects on families

Erin Finley 99C 06PH 07G 11PhD already owns three Emory degrees and she's working toward her fourth, a doctorate. Currently, Finley is living in San Antonio, Texas, where shs is interviewing military veterans and their families to determine how war-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is affecting them.

Until recently, Erin Finley’s 99C 06PH 07G 11PhD research involved the health of mothers in Guatemala, former combatants in Northern Ireland, and Sudanese refugees living in metro Atlanta. In each case, political violence was an undercurrent.

But her focus changed after what she saw each time she went through a U.S. airport. “I just couldn’t avoid it,” said Finley, a doctoral student in anthropology. Finley is on track to graduate in 2011 and when she does, she’ll have quite a collection of Emory degrees. (Finley already has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in anthropology from Emory and a master’s of public health degree from the Rollins School of Public Health.)

“Every time I go to the airport, I see troops walking through, and I’m just so blown away by what it takes to be deployed, and then to come home, and then to be deployed again,” Finley said.

So she turned her attention toward home. A graduate fellow at the Emory Center for Myth and Ritual in American Life (MARIAL), Finley’s fellowship research project is about how post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) affects families of soldiers returning from duty in Afghanistan and Iraq. She is particularly interested in ethnic differences in the occurrence of PTSD, and will talk to a cross-section of veterans, including Mexican Americans, African Americans, and Anglo Americans. She also hopes to talk with vets from other wars, including Vietnam, in an effort to compare experiences.

“If you look at the epidemiological literature, there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that ethnicity does change risk for developing post-traumatic stress reactions after experiences in combat,” Finley said.

Finley is doing her fieldwork in San Antonio, Texas, home to many U.S. military veterans and their families. The city also has a majority Latino population. “It’s such a perfect fit,” said Finley, a native of Maine who has lived in San Antonio for a year. She plans to stay in Texas until her fieldwork is finished, though she’s not sure when that might be.

“There’s a huge military presence,” both active duty and retired, Finley said, and there are many resources for wounded vets, including Brooke Army Medical Center, a Level 1 trauma center that has a world-renowned burn unit and amputee care center. In addition, churches and other community groups offer support to vets and their families.

There’s also “wonderful cultural diversity,” she said. “It’s a place where you walk around and there’s a really strong ethos that the war is not far away. The war is real and the people there know that it goes on every day.”

Finley plans to talk to about 100 soldiers, half of whom have been diagnosed with PTSD. She also will interview about 60 family members of those soldiers, 15 clinicians who work with soldiers diagnosed with PTSD, and 30 community members who help those soldiers with support groups and other services.

Most soldiers go through some period of readjustment when they return home, but only a minority suffers from after-affects like PTSD, she said. “There are a lot of different reasons for that, and the better we can understand some of those differences, the better job we can do supporting them.”

Many of the study participants said they joined because they believe it may help other vets, Finley said, adding that many told her that even though they do not have PTSD, they went through a period of feeling at odds with the world they came back to after combat.

“Readjustment is a very difficult process,” Finley said. “The soldiers may have been gone from the family for a year or more. The spouse has taken over most of the decisions. Meanwhile, the vet has come from a completely different planet. They’ve been apart. They are not used to each other.”

Finley has talked to several chaplains who conduct reunion briefings for military personnel, during which they offer practical advice for how to deal with issues that may surface. “They tell them not to expect that this is going to be a honeymoon again,” she said.

Often those diagnosed with PTSD have other medical challenges as well. “PTSD very often doesn’t happen by itself,” Finley said. So far, she has seen a range of circumstances, including many soldiers with PTSD who are able to work or go to school and still be involved with their families. She also has seen soldiers disabled by PTSD, although they hope to become functional again.

For soldiers with young children at home, it can be tricky. Finley has talked to a young couple with an infant at home and a husband who cannot work because of PTSD and a traumatic brain injury that affects his balance. Still, many families like these find ways to adapt. He is able to go to school, and his wife works from home so she can be there to watch the baby and her husband.—Beth Kurylo

A version of this story previously appeared in the Fall 2007 edition of Families That Work: Newsletter of the Emory Center for Myth and Ritual in American Life.