Impact of War Related Mental Disorders on Partners

Mental disorders tend to be highly prevalent in war survivors. This paper examined the long-term impact of psychiatric disorders of war survivors on the level of health vulnerability among their female spouses. Interviews were conducted with a nationally representative sample of 653 of the partners of male war survivors with disabilities. The war survivors' database information used to determine the presence of psychiatric disorders. Then the partners of survivors with (N = 333) and without (N = 320) psychological disorders were assessed via the health-related quality of life (HRQOL-SF36) questionnaire The frequency of depression and PTSD in war survivors suffer from psychological disorders were 50.7% and 43.9% respectively. Morbidity significantly was two times higher in partners of war survivors with psychiatric disorders (P < 0.001). Partners of war survivors suffered from psychiatric disorders had significantly lower scores in all 8 subscales of HRQOL-SF-36 (P < 0.001). Morbidity was the most important predictor for both poor physical (OR = 3.06, 95% CI = 1.44 to 6.48, P = 0.004) and mental health (OR = 2.37, 95% CI = 1.12 to 4.99, P = 0.02) in the partners of war survivors who suffered from psychiatric disorders. These findings stress that war survivors suffering from psychiatric disorders have significant more negative impact on their partners' morbidity and quality of life.