Date of Award

2006

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

Abstract

The present study examined whether sexual attitudes make a significant contribution to sexual dysfunction that cannot be accounted for solely by posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)-related symptom severity. Archival data were drawn from a clinic-referred sample of 100 women veterans with histories of sexual trauma. Participants completed several paper-pencil questionnaires including the Trauma Symptom Checklist-40 (TSC-40), Sexual Desire Conflict Scale for Women (SDCS), and the Sex Role Questionnaire (SRQ) in order to assess PTSD-related symptom severity, sexual dysfunction, and sexual attitudes, respectively. It was hypothesized that PTSD-related symptom severity would be positively correlated with sexual dysfunction and that sexual attitudes would make a unique contribution to sexual dysfunction, above and beyond PTSD-related symptom severity. Although overall PTSD-related symptom severity failed to account for variance in sexual dysfunction, one specific component of PTSD-related symptom severity, depression, did predict report of sexual dysfunction. Moreover, the combination of sexual attitude variables significantly predicted reported sexual dysfunction scores with the sexual attitude variable of sexual conservatism being the only individual predictor. Results suggest that sexual attitudes are important variables to consider in the assessment and treatment of sexual dysfunction for women veteran sexual trauma victims.

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