Introduction
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a psychiatric disorder that can occur in people across all ages, cultures, or gender who have experiences or witnessed a traumatic event [
1]. In a military context, trauma can occur following a threat to life through participation in armed combat or other military activities: patrols, espionage, and dangerous tasks. War-related traumatic events constitute the highest conditional risk for the development of PTSD [
2]. The risk of developing PTSD in the military context depends on several factors, and largely depends on the level of stress and social support received after deployment [
3].
Deployment to war primarily occurs in early adulthood, which is normally the time when combatants start their families, making the offspring population particularly vulnerable to the effects of war-related trauma. This vulnerability could be a consequence of altered combatant behavior, psychopathology regarding parenting, or secondary trauma [
4]. In this line, PTSD can lead to negative alterations in an individual’s behavior, including increased anger and reactivity, as well as social withdrawal [
1]. For example, the tendency to rely on strategies such as emotional numbing appears to have a ‘particularly detrimental effect on the quality of the veteran-child relationship’ [
5]. Growing up in an aggressive, stressful and unpredictable family environment can have detrimental consequences on the future life of the child [
6].
Characteristics of emotional numbness, such as unavailability, detachment, and disinterest as well as difficulty experiencing positive emotions, are closely linked to interpersonal impairment which consequently reduces a parent’s ability to participate and enjoy interactions with their child, thus diminishing the possibility of establishing a meaningful relationship [
7]. Furthermore, withdrawal, isolation, inability to express emotions [
5,
7], overprotection and excessive control of the child [
8] are some of the difficulties experienced by veterans when trying to function within the family system. In such family environments, important child developmental processes are particularly disrupted, such as attachment, separation, and individualization [
9]. Childhood and adolescence are particularly critical developmental stages [
10], and disruptions experienced at these stages affect subsequent education, socialization and functioning in adulthood.
As extensive research points out, the trauma of fighters (or parental PTSD) can impact their offspring, which can lead to later developmental, psychological, emotional, behavioral, and social difficulties [
11‐
15]. One of these long-term impacts that need to be studied are dysfunctional emotions such as emotional identification and regulation.
On one hand, Gross and colleagues [
16,
17] focused on two emotional regulation strategies: cognitive reappraisal (antecedent-focused strategy) and expressive suppression (response-focused strategy). Reappraisal is an antecedent-focused strategy that aims to alter the emotional meaning and impact of an emotionally eliciting situation [
18]. In contrast, suppression is a form of response modulation defined as inhibiting emotional expression [
19]. As suppression occurs later in the emotion generation process, it does not influence the emotion itself, but rather its outcomes [
20]. Emotion regulation supports psychological health and well-being, and helps manage negative life events and stress [
21‐
23]. Morris et al. [
24] proposed that parents provide role models through which their children mimic their emotional regulation strategies. Parents with psychopathology, including dysregulated emotions, may not be adequate models for their children to acquire emotion regulation [
25]. Despite their less frequent involvement compared to mothers, fathers also play a central and irreplaceable role in socializing children’s emotional regulation abilities [
26]. Thus, the offspring of veterans with PTSD might have a high probability of manifesting emotional deficits.
The development of emotion regulation is also influenced by the emotional climate of the family, attachment and marital relationships [
24]. In addition to having emotional regulation dysfunction, veteran parents with PTSD also have family dysfunction issues in areas such as conflict, family cohesion, marital adjustment, offspring abuse, affective reactivity and problem solving, where the latter two directly affect the development of children’s emotion regulation [
27‐
29].
On the other hand, Sifneos (1972) [
30] defines alexithymia as a deficit of affect which results in a difficulty in identifying, understanding, and communicating the emotions of oneself and those of others. Today, its definition is more explicitly refined with five dominant features: (1) difficulty in identifying one’s emotions and being able to distinguish them from one’s bodily sensations (somatic complaints are very frequent ); (2) verbal difficulty in describing feelings to others; (3) a reduction or inability to feel emotions; (4) a lack of tendency to imagine another’s emotion, or a cognitive style oriented outwardly rather than inwardly; and (5) low capacity for fantasy or symbolic thought [
31]. This emotional regulation disorder, whose origin, role, and function may vary, could result from an imitation of the parents’ way of managing their emotions, or conversely, the adoption of a different attitude to that used by parents, such as compensating in adulthood for the lack of emotional sharing experienced in childhood [
32].
People with alexithymia have difficulty regulating their emotions. Low level of emotion regulation is associated with low levels of social ability, emotional expression, and emotional intelligence [
33]. Several models have been proposed regarding the etiology of alexithymia, some theorists hypothesize that childhood events such as traumatic experiences (mourning, separation, or other events) and/or a dysfunctional parent-child relationship contribute to alexithymia [
32]. Some research has also indicated that optimal parenting in one parent may protect against the development of alexithymia even if parenting in the other parent is perceived to be more pathological [
34].
From 1975 to 1990, a multidimensional civil war affected Lebanon [
35]. In 1975, began a period of struggles and massacres between armed forces from several political and religious components. These deadly conflicts set the country on fire and bloodshed for fifteen years [
35]. An unknown number of civilian Lebanese men turned fighters took part in the fighting. It is imperative to understand the psychological consequences of war on the offspring, even if many health problems of veterans remain to be studied. Accordingly, the objective of this study was to assess the association between paternal/veterans PTSD and adult offspring’s emotional regulation strategies and alexithymia levels, assessed 30 years after the end of war. We hypothesized that combatants’ PTSD would be associated with emotional dysregulation (lower cognitive reappraisal, higher expressive suppression, and alexithymia), when assessed 30 years after their fathers’ exposure to war-related trauma.
Methods
Study design
A cross-sectional study was carried out between September 2020 and September 2021, and enrolled 150 participants (a sample of 75 fathers of Lebanese former veterans and paramilitary veterans and their adult offspring), recruited from the general population chosen in a convenient way from all Lebanese governorates (Beirut, Mount Lebanon, North Lebanon, South Lebanon, and Bekaa). Lebanese veterans were selected from the general population, a non-clinical sample of men who participated in or lived during the Lebanese war 30 years ago. Invitations to participate in the study were sent through social media platforms, acquaintances and specifically political parties to find veterans who participated in the war; veterans are more likely to be affiliated to political parties than are those of comparable ages who are not veterans [
36]. After that, we used the snowball sampling technique (each subject provided multiple referrals) to recruit the rest of the veteran-offspring sample.
Data was collected from each participant through face-to-face personal interviews after obtaining their oral consent. These interviews were conducted by a clinical psychologist, who received a thorough training by the principal investigator on how to ask the questions and how to communicate with the patients.
Minimal sample size calculation
We used the G*Power software to determine the sample size. The minimum required sample size was 70 participants, considering an alpha error of 5%, a power of 80%, a minimal model R-square of 0.25 and allowing 20 predictors to be included in the model.
Questionnaire
The questionnaire used was anonymous and in Arabic, the native language in Lebanon; it required approximately 15 min to complete. The questionnaire consisted of three parts. The first part of the questionnaire included an explanation of the study topic and objective, and a statement ensuring the anonymity of respondents.
The second part of the questionnaire contained sociodemographic information about the father (age, educational level, marital status), and adult offspring (age, sex, marital status and educational level). We also collected data related to combat injuries (casualties to military personnel resulting from combat) and physical injuries (chronic illnesses that have resulted from being exposed to war and/or prolonged combat) among veterans. For the veterans and paramilitary veterans’ population, the PTSD Checklist was used to assess post-traumatic stress disorder, and the Combat Exposure Scale (CES) was used to measure the level of combat exposure. For the offspring population, the Emotional Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) was used to assess emotional regulation strategies and the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS) was used to measure the levels of alexithymia.
The third part included the scales used in this study:
PTSD Checklist. This questionnaire was used to evaluate the manifestations of PTSD according to the DSM-4 [
37]. It has 17 items that are scored from 1 (not at all) to 5 (extremely); higher results imply greater severity of PTSD symptoms [
38] (Cronbach’s alpha in this study = 0.92).
Combat Exposure Scale (CES) is a 7-item self-report measure that assesses wartime stressors experienced by combatants. Items are rated on a 5-point frequency (1 = “no” or “never” to 5 = “26 + times” or “51 + times”), 5-point duration (1 = “never” to 5 = “7 + months”), or 45-point degree of loss (1 = “none” to 45 = “76% or more”) scale. The total CES score (ranging from 0 to 41) is calculated by using a sum of weighted scores, which can be classified into one of five categories of combat exposure ranging from “light” to “heavy” [
39] (Cronbach’s alpha in this study = 0.92).
Emotion Regulation Questionnaire. Validated in Lebanon [
40], it is composed of 10 items that measure whether a respondent uses cognitive reappraisal or expressive suppression to regulate their emotions. Answers options varied between 1 (strongly disagree) and 7 (strongly agree). Higher scores reflect a larger use of the concerned emotion regulation strategy [
18] (Cronbach’s alpha in this study = 0.85 for expressive suppression and 0.74 for cognitive reappraisal).
Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20). Validated in Lebanon [
41], this 20-item scale was used to assess alexithymia [
42]. Items are rated using the 5-point Likert scale from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree. Participants scoring ≤ 51 were classified as non-alexithymic, whereas those scoring between 52, 60 and ≥ 61 were classified as being possibly alexithymic and alexithymic respectively (Cronbach’s alpha in this study = 0.77).
Translation procedure
The forward and backward translation method was applied to different scales (PTSD Checklist and Combat Exposure Scale). The English version was translated to Arabic by a Lebanese translator who was completely unrelated to the study. Afterwards, a Lebanese psychologist with a full working proficiency in English, translated the Arabic version back to English. The initial and translated English versions were compared to detect and later eliminate any inconsistencies.
Statistical analysis
SPSS version 25 software was used for statistical analysis. The sample was normally distributed as verified by the skewness and kurtosis values of the alexithymia, cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression [
43]. Linear regressions were conducted, taking alexithymia, cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression scores as dependent variables. The results of the multivariate analyzes were adjusted for the following independent variables: father’s exposure to combat, father’s PTSD, father’s age, father’s education, physical injuries during the war, father suffered combat injuries, as well as age, sex and level of education of the offspring. Significance was set at p < .05.
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