23 As can be seen, the veterans report a very high number of both physical and psychological symptoms: in fact, the mean number of symptoms reported was 10.1. This is considerably more than comparable primary care and community samples. Research elsewhere has indicated that the number of symptoms is related to the presence of psychological disorder (46,51), but caution should be adopted in drawing such conclusions with a trauma population where patients may well have both physical and psychological sequelae. The veterans tended to report more psychological than physical symptoms, and the physical symptoms tended to cluster around back pains, hearing problems, and pains in arms and legs. This cluster would be expected in persons who had received beatings, but was also rlated to war injuries. The data from the SRQ-20 was similar to previous studies with populations with non-traumatic disorders, with depression alone being twice as common as anxiety alone. Mixed anxiety-depression was the most frequent profile from the SRQ-20, which is again similar to previous studies. The data from the CAPS indicates mean scores in the range obtained from other veterans samples (58). The scores on the CAPS suggest that the cutting scores used in American studies are likely to be similar for a Zimbabwean sample, but this needs to confirmed by additional study. Table 8 over describes the correlations between the various measures, described earlier.

Select target paragraph3

Add to table of contents