Cores & Centers | Our Interdisciplinary Research Cores | Women and Trauma | Current Projects

Current Research Core Projects

Current Core activities include the analyses of data on trauma occurrence and treatment programs by gender in which three main sources of data are used.  These include evaluation data of Trauma Treatment Programs currently underway in Veteran's Administration (VA) hospitals; assessments from trauma and related experiences from large nationally-representative population samples; and data from private insurance claims.

In addition, several of our Women and Trauma Research Core members are engaged in analyses of large survey samples such as data from the National Comorbidity Study and the National Epidemiological Study of Alcohol and Related Disorders (NESARC) to examine:
  • gender differences in co-occurrence patterns between PTSD and other psychiatric disorders,
  • the role of alcohol and substances in the self-medication of pain symptoms in traumatized women, and
  • patterns of gambling and problem gambling in traumatized women as compared to men.

The Survey of Experiences of Returning Veterans - SERV Study

A major, nationwide study is now under way to determine whether there are gender differences in how female and male military combat veterans readjust to civilian life - one of the first empirical investigations of its kind.

Of the 2 million Americans who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001, approximately 230,000 have been women, and an unprecedented number of these women have been in combat.  There has been concern that women combat veterans are more susceptible to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and post-deployment readjustment issues than men, given similar experiences.  However, this speculation has not been investigated with empirical studies until now. This study, funded by a $2.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, is a collaborative effort that includes researchers from the Women's Health Research at Yale’s Women and Trauma Core, the VA, and the University of Connecticut.

NEW: Click here for the Announcement from the VA.