PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF POSTTRAUMATIC-STRESS-DISORDER IMAGERY IN WORLD-WAR-II AND KOREAN COMBAT VETERANS

We assessed the heart rate, skin conductance, and left lateral frontalis electromyographic responses of World War II (WWII) and Korean War male veterans to recollection of their combat experiences by using a script-driven imagery technique previously validated in Vietnam veterans (Pitman et al., 1990; Pitman, Orr, Forgue, de Jong, & Claiborn, 1987). Medication-free subjects were classified on the basis of criteria from the revised third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders into posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD; n = 8) and non-PTSD (n = 12) groups, which did not differ in over-all combat exposure or severity of personal combat events. PTSD subjects' physiological responses during personal combat imagery were markedly larger than those of non-PTSD subjects, even though the self-reponed emotional responses of the two groups were comparable. A physiological discriminant function derived from Vietnam veterans (Orr et al, 1990) correctly classified 7 of the 8 PTSD subjects (sensitivity was 88%) and 12 of the 12 non-PTSD subjects (specificity was 100%; p < .001).