The role of intrusion, avoidance, and cognitive coping strategies more than 50 years after war

Abstract

The relationships between war events, cognitive coping strategies, posttraumatic stress reactions, and depressive symptoms were examined in 248 people who experienced war 50 years ago. The findings suggest that people who experienced war events that indicate a more severe involvement in war suffered from more depressive symptoms. War events that might be experienced by many people in the community appeared not to be related to depression scores. The occurrence of intrusion and avoidance appeared to be related to depressive symptoms. When cognitive coping strategies were included in the analysis, intrusion and avoidance no longer were significant. However, cognitive coping strategies, such as positive reappraisal, positive refocusing, rumination, acceptance, and self-blame, were significantly related to depressive symptoms. Intervention programs should pay attention to these cognitive coping strategies.

Keywords:

• War
• intrusion
• avoidance
• cognitive coping
• depression

The authors would like to thank Tamara Dijksman for her help in collecting the data.

Notes

1. Instructions for completing the CERQ in relation to war events: You have experienced negative events during the war. More people have had similar experiences and everyone deals with them in his or her own way. By means of the following questions, you are asked what you think about having experienced negative events during the war. Please read the sentences below and indicate how often you have the following thoughts by circling the most suitable answer.

2. The CERQ has been administered simultaneously with the Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations (CISS; Endler & Parker, 1990) in both an adolescent and adult sample. On the whole it can be stated that the correlations between the CERQ and CISS subscales can be interpreted in a theoretically meaningful manner. For example, high correlations were found between the CERQ Refocus on Planning and Positive Reappraisal subscales on the one hand and the CISS Task-oriented Coping subscale on the other hand. These scales all reflect the active coping with or management of the problem. In addition, high correlations were found between CERQ subscales Self-blame, Rumination, and Catastrophizing on the one hand and the CISS Emotion-oriented Coping subscale on the other, all referring to a certain way of being preoccupied with your emotions and in general considered less functional strategies.

3. Having been a soldier or resistance fighter during war appeared not to be related to depressive symptoms (respectively: Pearson r= − 0.04, NS; Pearson r=0.02, NS). Therefore these variables were not controlled for.

4. When controlling for age, gender, marital status (married or living together versus living alone) and living conditions (independently versus dependent on others) in the regression analysis, by means of entering these variables in the first step of the regression equation, none of these variables contributed significantly to the prediction of depressive symptoms (beta = 0.06, beta = − 0.04, beta = 0.11, and beta = − 0.03 respectively). Controlling for these issues does not change the findings in any significant way.