Beck Anxiety Inventory

Method

Participants

The thirty-five members comprising two groups of Veterans from the Iraq/Afghanistan wars who suffer from medium to severe PTSD between the ages of 18 and 45, are to be recruited randomly from those able to speak English as a first language, understand the purpose for the study, be able to understand informed consent, and have access to aftercare facilities. Both men and women would be included. The exclusions would be comprised of those who have current psychosis, mania, or dementia, as measured by the caregivers/therapists who already have knowledge of the subjects. The experimental and control groups, approximately 17 members each, would be made up of equal parts participants with medium and severe PTSD symptoms.

Each group of 17 participants would be divided equally as much as possible to control the variable of degree of stress which each participant exhibits. In other words, those with less stress would be divided in two, and so on, so that the two groups would be about equal in types of participants. The Beck Anxiety Inventory is a 21-item multiple choice questionnaire designed to assess level of anxiety. The validity of this test is well-known, and has been used continually since its inception in 1988. Dr. T. Fydrich, Ph.D (1992) has said that the Beck inventory is “acceptably reliable over an average time lapse of 11 days.” This inventory discriminates between anxiety and depression, thus giving a snapshot of a participant’s emotion outside of

Importance I was wondering how important spirituality or religion is to you? 2. Affiliation Do you happen to attend a church or some other type of spiritual or religious community? 3. Resources Are there certain spiritual or religious beliefs and practices that you find particularly helpful in dealing with difficulties? 4. Relationship to problem I was also wondering if your present problem has affected you spiritually or religiously?

Note. Questions adapted from Hodge (2004a), Pargament and Krumrei (2009), Plante (2009), and Shafranske (2005). One group would be the control, with no therapies of outright spiritual or religious content. They would be interviewed with MI for one hour twice a week, eliciting from each participant the core or basic need that they perceive as the most important to address in therapy. It could be related to flashbacks, suicidal ideation, family relationship issues, guilt of not doing enough on the battlefield, and so forth. The therapist or researcher would help the subject to work through the concerned area by using “mindfulness” (adaptations of meditation on positive aspects of life to be cultivated). This is outlined in the MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) plan from the Military Medicine Journal