The Returned Prisoner of War: Factors in Family Reintegration.

摘要

In the considerable body of literature concerned with the general topic of the adjustment of returned prisoners of war, great emphasis has been placed upon a careful documentation of the returnees' physical and psychological adjustment following imprisonment and repatriation. In contrast, the literature on the adjustment of the family to the returning prisoner in this investigation which concentrates on data longitudinally collected on 48 families of returned prisoners of war, an attempt was made to identify the best combination of factors which may be used to explain the degree of reintegration of the returned prisoner of war into his family system. Four sets of data were considered in the development of the regression equation: (1) background characteristics of both the husband and wife; (2) indices of family preparedness for separation and reunion; (3) reports by the returnees on their prison experience and reports of their psychiatric status at the time of repatriation; (4) measures of family adjustment during the separation period. The reliability and validity of the criterion measure of family reintegration were discussed. Linear multiple regression procedures were utilized for the purpose of analyzing the unique contributions of each of the predictor variables in accounting for the variance in the criterion and for deriving an equation in which the variables could be optimally weighted. Results were presented and implications discussed.