Linking Pathological Narcissism to PTSD in Veterans
Faculty Mentor
Kevin Meehan
Major/Area of Research
Clinical Psychology
Description
Combat deployments are well-known life events that confer risk for post- traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in veterans. Since clinical intervention also relies on the identification of malleable predictors of PTSD, the present study sought to build on prior work demonstrating that narcissism is related to the development and maintenance of PTSD in civilians. Narcissism may leave one more vulnerable to trauma because of a fragile sense of self, but the strength of the association between pathological narcissism features and PTSD has yet to be examined in a veteran sample. The current study sought to address this gap by examining the incremental utility of narcissism for predicting PTSD symptoms relative to combat experience in a sample of post-9/11 veterans (N=179). Stepwise regression analyses showed that greater pathological narcissism features significantly incremented combat experience in the prediction of PTSD symptoms. When dimensions of narcissism features were examined as separate predictors of PTSD, vulnerable but not grsndiose narcissism features was found to have a significant effect. Our results align with recent work demonstrating that current personality features are likely just as important as past life events in the study of PTSD in veterans. Further re- search incorporating a greater variety of personality features and life events is needed to understand the role of pathological narcissism features in the development of PTSD.
Linking Pathological Narcissism to PTSD in Veterans
Combat deployments are well-known life events that confer risk for post- traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in veterans. Since clinical intervention also relies on the identification of malleable predictors of PTSD, the present study sought to build on prior work demonstrating that narcissism is related to the development and maintenance of PTSD in civilians. Narcissism may leave one more vulnerable to trauma because of a fragile sense of self, but the strength of the association between pathological narcissism features and PTSD has yet to be examined in a veteran sample. The current study sought to address this gap by examining the incremental utility of narcissism for predicting PTSD symptoms relative to combat experience in a sample of post-9/11 veterans (N=179). Stepwise regression analyses showed that greater pathological narcissism features significantly incremented combat experience in the prediction of PTSD symptoms. When dimensions of narcissism features were examined as separate predictors of PTSD, vulnerable but not grsndiose narcissism features was found to have a significant effect. Our results align with recent work demonstrating that current personality features are likely just as important as past life events in the study of PTSD in veterans. Further re- search incorporating a greater variety of personality features and life events is needed to understand the role of pathological narcissism features in the development of PTSD.