Introduction: Chemical weapons induce various and long lasting physical complications which could be affected the mental health. In this study we assessed the symptoms of Past Traumatic Stress Disorder in chemical and non-chemical injured war veterans.
Methods: After the approval and support of Zanjan University of Medical Sciences, This study was a cross-sectional which was conducted on chemical (80 cases) and non-chemical (89 cases) war injured veterans in Zanjan, Iran during 2009-10. Persian version of both The PTSD Checklist-Military and Impact of Event Scale-Revised were used for evaluation of psychiatric condition. Data were analyzed and compared with using SPSS 16^th edition and P.value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant.
Result: Prevalence of PTSD symptoms was 40 % and 28.1% in chemical and non-chemical injured veterans, respectively. PTSD prevalence and scales did not show any significant difference between two groups of chemical and non-chemical war injured veterans (p <0.05). Moreover, there was a relationship between these variables and some factors like the kind of soldier dispatch by military organizations and their occupations (p<0.05), but there was not any correlation between these and the time of event, literacy, and types of chemical agents (p>0.05).
Conclusion: Although there is no significant difference between chemical and non-chemical war injured veterans in terms of the frequency of PTSD symptoms, mental health of veterans who exposed to chemical agents because of long-term adverse consequences could be affected.