Study Studying Experience Of Partners Who Support Ptsd

[Girl3]

My husband would rather get a divorce than face MY PTSD. Actually - it isn't so much that he wants a divorce, it's that he wants the psychiatrist to 'fix' me. I suspect a lot of parteners in PTSD relationships are like "OK, you have a diagnosis, give it a rest. Take some medicine and get better."

 

[amethist]

I disagree with your idea about just wanting our sufferers to "just take the medicine and get better" Girl3. I actually understand there is so much more to it than that, and I think many more do too, once they learn and understand just what it means to suffer with PTSD.

 

[discarded]

I also know that medicine is not going to fix this, in fact nothing will ever make it go away. When he went to counselling years ago he was doing so much better and talking to me about stuff but since his counsellor went overseas he quit counselling and its been steadily down hill from there. His psychiatrist just hands out the medication and won't push him to talk or anything else. He only sees the side my husband wants him to see and not that side that is reserved for me and the kids.

 

[AS1975]

Is there any real reason the research HAS to be in some geographical location? There are online survey engines (survey monkey for example) which would allow you to collect responses from online participants and it would provide a greater potential pool of respondents (there may be statistical validity issues, but surely that can be worked around?). It would be an interesting research project, to not only deal with the subject, but deal with it using a pool that is more diverse than average.

 

[discarded]

Great idea AS1975

 

[chris th]

Hi AS1975,
Thank you for the suggestions! The reason for limiting my study within the UK is rather practical and methodological. I use qualitative methodology, and specifically Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, which means that I have to conduct face to face semi-structured interviews with participants, where the questions are partly formed based on the participant's responses. The online survey engines are great for quantitative studies, where you have many participants and are interested in statistical correlations. I chose qualitative methodology because I'm more interested in gaining an in depth understanding of individuals' subjective experience of what's like to be dealing with PTSD as a couple. So because the methodology I chose requires face to face interviews, I can only interview people in the UK where I'm based.

 

[LizardViolet]

I'm glad to see you're doing this research, chris th. It is a neglected area. And qualitative methodology, especially long interviews as you will be doing, can be very useful for discovering themes and issues in an under-researched area. (I did long interviews for my master's thesis and although transcribing the interviews was an incredibly time consuming and sometimes tedious task, some incredible stuff came out of them.)

I hope some psychology students in the U.S. and in other countries will follow on and do work in this area!