Assessing the co-occurrence of psychological well-being in the intimate relationships of ex-services personnel in Northern Ireland

The current thesis therefore included participants’ traumatic history in analyses. The empirical part of this thesis utilised male military veterans and their IPs living in Northern Ireland to explore the issues around ST. The data was collected through standardized questionnaires designed to evaluate different aspects of participants’ well-being and by using eye tracking equipment to ascertain if traumatised veterans and their IPs experience deficits in emotional processing, specifically in facial affect recognition.

The questionnaire data was analysed primarily through dyadic Actor-Partner-Interdependence-Models. The eye tracking study used the Facial Affect Recognition Task and the Contextual Recognition of Affect Faces Task, in which participants viewed faces displaying different facial expressions (i.e., neutral, happiness, fear, sadness, and disgust) superimposed upon emotionally valenced (i.e., happiness, fear, sadness, and disgust) and neutral images.

The overall results of this thesis showed a strong negative relationship between veterans’ PTSD symptoms and their IPs’ well-being, but these relationships were attenuated once IPs’ past trauma has been accounted for. Participants’ well-being was also found to be related to their attachment orientations and empathy. Finally, IPs of veterans with high levels of PTSD symptoms displayed deficits in facial recognition abilities.

These findings may be particularly useful for clinicians treating Northern Irish veterans with PTSD, and they point to the importance of a compassionate acknowledgement of the role that IPs can play in the psychological health and well-being of their veteran partner. Veterans’ IPs may also need specific support in relation to ST.