Relationship between Perceived Social Support with Secondary Stress and Mental Health of the Wives of Psychiatric Veterans

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), is one of the acute and chronic disorder in war veterans, which ,affects the mental health of their wives in addition to causing problems in their lives. The main goal of this study was to evaluate the relationship between perceived social support with secondary stress and mental health of wives of psychiatric veterans, who refer to Tehran Sadr psychiatric Hospital. The statistical samples of this study were 190 wives of psychiatric veterans who referred to Tehran Sadr psychiatric clinic and randomly selected from these population samples in  2020. Data were collected using three standard questionnaires of Perceived Social Support (Zimet et al, 1988), Secondary Stress (Motta et al, 1997), and general health Questionnaires-28 (Goldberg and Hillier, 1979). Pearson correlation and multivariate regression were used to test the hypotheses. The multivariate regression analysis revealed that perceived social support was able to predict secondary stress and mental health of statistical samples and also alone predict 33.3% of the changes in secondary stress and 35.8% of the changes in secondary stress and mental health. Therefore, it can be said that perceived social support is a significant predictor of secondary stress and mental health of spouses of psychiatric veterans, and provides psychological support services to this vulnerable group can play an important role in ensuring their mental health.