The Effects of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms on Educational Functioning in Student Veterans

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) occurs at high rates among student veterans and is known to negatively impact educational functioning; however, the unique effects of PTSD are less clear, given that PTSD is highly comorbid with many other conditions that could potentially affect educational functioning. The present study had two objectives: (a) to determine the impact of PTSD symptom severity on educational functioning after accounting for demographic variables, traumatic brain injury, and commonly co-occurring mental health conditions; and (b) to identify which symptom clusters of PTSD have the greatest impact on educational functioning. Educational functioning and other commonly occurring mental health conditions were assessed cross-sectionally among 90 student veterans. Traumatic brain injury and major depressive disorder (MDD) were initially associated with impaired educational functioning; however, after adding PTSD into the final model, only PTSD (β = .44, p < .001) and MDD (β = .31, p = .001) remained associated with educational impairment. Follow-up analyses indicated that the reexperiencing symptom cluster was most strongly associated with impaired educational functioning (β = .28, p = .031). Overall, these results suggest that PTSD symptoms-especially reexperiencing symptoms-may be a driving force behind impaired educational impairment, even after accounting for other commonly co-occurring mental health conditions.