Military sexual trauma: Exploring the moderating role of restrictive emotionality among male veterans

Military Sexual Trauma (MST) has been found to be positively associated with mental health outcomes, such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, depressive symptoms, symptoms of anxiety, and insomnia severity (Jenkins et al., 2015; O'Brien & Sher, 2013). Male survivors of MST face unique challenges, including concerns associated with hypermasculinity (e.g., restrictive emotionality [RE]). Men with high RE (difficulty expressing emotions) report more negative mental health outcomes compared to men with low RE (Good et al., 1995). The present study investigated whether RE moderated the relationship between MST and negative mental health outcomes, while controlling for combat exposure (CE) and age to further assess confounding variables. One hundred thirty-four adult male veterans in behavioral health treatment at a large VA medical center in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States were recruited. Participants provided self-reported data on MST and symptoms of PTSD, depression, anxiety, and insomnia, as well as their endorsement of restrictive emotionality. PROCESS v3.3 (Hayes, 2017) regression analytic method was used to test main and interaction effects. MST was a significant predictor of PTSD symptoms and insomnia severity-but not depressive symptoms or symptoms of anxiety. RE also moderated the relationship between MST and PTSD symptoms, depressive symptoms, and insomnia, after controlling for CE and age. These findings suggest that restricting emotions has a negative influence on men's mental health functioning. Therefore, assessing male veterans' experiences of expressing their emotions within the context of masculinity and their military training will likely have implications on trauma processing and treatment outcomes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).