Date of Award

1992

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Psychology

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Larry Grebstein

Abstract

This study attempts to determine whether a convenience sample of 38 college students participating in a study of reactions to the Persian Gulf War show systematic patterns of change in their depressive cognitions. In a similar study, Teixeira and Valentino (1991) found that students at a large northeastern state university had 9% more depressive cognitions at the out-break of Persian Gulf hostilities (January, 1991) than four months previously. Studies in Israel (i.e., Hobfoll et al., 1989) found that depression was markedly higher in the months during the Israel-Lebanon War (1982) than in months preceding or following hostilities. Both of these studies employed a between-subjects design that is at risk of not accurately detecting some of the small but systematic changes predicted. The hypotheses of this study are that students in a repeated-measures design will have higher depression scores during the weeks of the most active conflict in the Gulf, and that a stress inoculation training program will mitigate the predicted changes. The results show that students had almost 40% higher scores on the Beck Depression Inventory during the Persian Gulf War than after the cease-fire, and that the stage of the war accounts for 25% of the variance in depression scores. The designed stress inoculation training had no measurable effect.

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