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Posttraumatic Stress Disorder is a leading health problem among military personnel involved in armed conflicts. The current study identified and examined the influence of combat stressors leading to the development of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Ukrainian military personnel (N= 188) who participated in the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine for a period of 4 to 16 months. The results showed that the leading combat stressors regarding Ukrainian service members’ predisposition to PTSD were as follows: “witnessing someone get hit by incoming or outgoing rounds”; “being surrounded by the enemy”; ”danger of being injured or killed, ambushed, in other very dangerous situations”;
“corpses or blood”; “smells of gases, corpses, etc.”; “stressors of family life”; “fear of a respondent’s own death”; “inability to change a respondent’s own living conditions”; “ruined buildings, machinery, structures, landscape”; “physical killing of an enemy”; “intense interpersonal conflicts”; “monotony of the surrounding conditions”; “stressors of a moral and ethical nature”; “dissatisfied biological and social needs”; and “long-term loads that cause fatigue.” This study found a significant difference between Ukrainian military personnel’s subjective perception of the power of a combat stressor and its real ability to cause Posttraumatic Stress Disorder symptoms. Those stressors that were subjectively evaluated by military personnel as more significant did not increase Posttraumatic Stress Disorder symptoms. These results may be useful for the prevention and treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in military personnel involved in armed conflicts
