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Article Excerpt
Iraqi Gulf War (GW) veteran refugees or those who fled the Hussein regime and were subsequently granted refugee stated by the United States are at high risk for the same mental health maladies that afflict U.S. GW veterans. We conducted a pilot survey on a group of Iraqi GW veteran refugees to assess levels of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, panic, and anxiety. We hypothesized that significantly more participants with PTSD would report depression, panic, and anxiety symptoms than their non-PTSD counterparts, We further expected that those with PTSD would report significantly higher mean scores on depression, panic, and anxiety than those participants not identified as having PTSD. Results indicated high levels of each of the symptom categories among the PTSD groups. PTSD sufferers conjointly assessed with significantly elevated levels of depression and panic as compared to their non-PTSD counterparts.
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The Gulf War (GW) during the 1990s marked the first large-scale, U.S. military deployment since Vietnam. The effects of the GW have been long lasting and have included veterans being plagued with numerous maladies. Health issues have arisen on large scales. For example, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been reported among U.& veterans at levels ranging from 1.9% (Barrett et al., 2002; Iowa Persian Gulf Study Group [IPGSG], 1997) up to 10.1%, depending on deployment status (Feussner, 2002); depression has been reported at 17.0% (IPGSG), and anxiety at 4.0% (IPGSG). Some of these health issues have been relatively simple to diagnose because of their similarities with veterans' symptoms from previous wars such as Vietnam. Others have been more elusive to identify, partly because of the lack of a comparable combat environment and partly because of their similarities with contemporary maladies that have not previously been associated with combat or veteran status.
From a sociopolitical perspective, many Americans view the Gulf War as one fought by the United States, partnered with Kuwait, against Iraq. This view may be based upon an overall lack of information on the part of the general American public (Bennett, 1994) as well as the inherent self-bias of national news reporting (Halliday, 1997). In fact, some Iraqis, including those who fought in the Iraqi military and fled the Hussein regime at the conclusion of the war, were subsequently granted refugee status by the United States because of their pledged allegiance to it. Thus, an overlooked perspective is that Iraqi GW veteran refugees are exiled from their homelands as a result of the GW, and that some of them actually served in the revolution against the Iraqi regime. (Nassar-McMillan & Hakim-Larson, 2003).
Historically, refugees from combat situations in other regions have reported significant levels of PTSD (e.g., Blair, 2000; Mollica, Wyshak, & Lavelle, 1987), depression (e.g., Blair, 2000, 2001), and anxiety (Lee, Lee, Chum Lee, & Yoon, 2001; Tang & Fox, 2001). These symptoms may be characteristic of immigrant, refugee, and exile issues. Exiled Iraqi veterans of the GW, in the United States as refugee immigrants, are a neglected population in terms of mental health treatment. Their circumstances may be similar to those of other refugee veteran groups in that the host of losses and traumas they have experienced render them particularly vulnerable to maladies such as PTSD, anxiety, depression, and the like (Kira, 2001). A better understanding of the needs and issues among this group is necessary in order to provide more effective mental health services (Nassar-McMillan & Hakim-Larson, 2003).
In addition to war traumas, recent U.S. immigrants from the Arab world may join their second- and third-generation counterparts in exhibiting a confused ethnic identity (Nassar-McMillan, 2003). In part, this confused identity results from the political tensions between the United States and numerous countries in the Arab world. Individuals of Arab descent may be unwilling or reluctant to divulge any personal information, particularly regarding their ethnicity, to mainstream Americans. Iraqi GW veteran refugees may be, in addition, distrustful of their earlier immigrant counterparts, who may come from a different cultural and religious background within Iraq. Their distrust of others may even extend to their recently immigrated peers, due to the political regime in Iraq, which pitted factions of both civilians and military personnel against one another (Nassar-McMillan & Hakim-Larson, 2003).These factors represent a stark contrast from Arab culture in general, which emphasizes the importance of community. Taken together, many Iraqi GW veteran refugees may view their personal environment as threatening and or unsafe. Since the World Trade Center bombings in New York City on September 11, 2001, anti-Arab sentiment in the United States has heightened, creating yet another layer of stress for this group of Iraqi GW veteran refugees (Nassar-McMillan).
Perhaps due to some of these factors, only a few published research studies have been conducted into the mental health status of Iraqi GW veteran refugees in the United States (Jamil et al., 2002;Takeda, 2000;Via, Callahan, Barry, Jackson, & Gerber, 1997) or in other countries (Gorst-Unsworth & Goldenberg, 1998). There remains a need for inquiry on this issue. In our study, we examined some of the variables present in other research on U.S. veterans of the GW, namely PTSD, depression, and anxiety (Barrett et al., 2002). Based on large-scale national research efforts aimed at identifying medical and psychological consequences of U.S. veterans' participation in the GW, we believed that...
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