(Note: This is an excerpt from an article just published in PTSD Journal. The online version of the magazine is available for free. This article is on page 15. 
When it comes to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, most agree that the higher the “dose” of trauma, the greater the likelihood of getting PTSD. For this reason, studies of veterans focus on the amount of combat trauma. Rarely do studies consider the “dose” of predeployment trauma experienced at home.
This is a mistake. Consider the words of Dr. Beth Grady, a pediatrician from in San Francisco who said the following on a webinar earlier this year: “You can be deployed to a combat situation in Afghanistan, and your risk of developing PTSD is not significantly increased by the nature or duration of your combat exposure. What does increase your risk of developing PTSD is whether or not you’ve experienced childhood adversity.”
Dr. Grady cited the study of 746 Danish soldiers deployed to Afghanistan for six months in 2009 who had PTSD symptoms monitored five times (once, predeployment, once during deployment and three times in the first eight months’ home).
The Dr. Grady mentioned in this article just published in is a member of the ACEs Connection Network and the above-mentioned webinar is also online and can be viewed here. 
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