Secondary Traumatic Stress Exposure and Hazardous Drinking Among United States Army Judge Advocate General's Corps Personnel.

INTRODUCTION

Secondary traumatic stress impacts professionals working with trauma survivors. However, literature specific to the military legal community is limited. Additional research is needed to better understand how legal professionals cope with indirect exposure to trauma, including using alcohol as a coping mechanism. In a sample of U.S. Army Judge Advocate General's Corps (JAG-C) personnel, this study examined whether hazardous alcohol use was associated with career secondary trauma exposure indirectly via variance shared in common with secondary traumatic stress symptoms and drinking to cope.

MATERIALS AND

METHODS

Judge Advocate General's Corps personnel completed validated questionnaires measuring career trauma exposure, secondary traumatic stress symptoms, drinking to cope, and hazardous alcohol use. Statistical mediation analyses tested sequential pathways linking these variables, controlling for race/ethnicity, gender, rank/pay grade, prior combat exposure, and depression and anxiety symptoms.

RESULTS

Career trauma exposure significantly predicted hazardous drinking indirectly via secondary traumatic stress symptoms and drinking to cope. However, an alternative model-where coping preceded secondary traumatic stress-was not statistically significant, supporting the hypothesized temporal sequence.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings suggest a potential sequential pathway from trauma exposure to secondary traumatic stress and coping-related hazardous drinking, underscoring an important downstream impact of occupation-specific stress within JAG-C personnel. Targeted interventions that simultaneously address secondary traumatic stress symptoms and alcohol-specific coping motives may mitigate hazardous drinking in this understudied, mission-critical population. Weaknesses of the study includes its cross-sectional design and limited generalizability to the Army at-large.