Seven married couples, each consisting of a veteran who had been deployed to Operation Iraqi Freedom and a cohabiting female spouse, participated in an uncontrolled trial of structured approach therapy (SAT), a couple-based treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). After completing treatment, the group of 7 returning veterans showed significant reductions in both self- and clinician-related PTSD with posttreatment Hedge g effect size improvements of 2.51 and 3.54, indicating an extremely high magnitude of change in posttraumatic stress. Paired t tests also indicated significant decreases in spousal anxiety, with a trend toward a significant decrease in spousal depression. Analyses of reliable change on the individual level indicated that 4 of 5 veterans and 3 of 4 spouses with dyadic adjustment scores in the distressed range prior to treatment showed reliable decreases in distress over the course of SAT placing them in the nondistressed range at posttreatment. Five of 7 spouses showed reliable decreases in depression, and 4 of 7 spouses showed reliable decreases in anxiety over the course of treatment with SAT. These results support the hypothesis that participation in SAT reduces PTSD in returning veterans while reducing relationship problems and distress in their spouses. More extensive research is being conducted with a larger sample in a randomized clinical trial.

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) occurs at high rates among student veterans and is known to negatively impact educational functioning; however, the unique effects of PTSD are less clear, given that PTSD is highly comorbid with many other conditions that could potentially affect educational functioning. The present study had two objectives: (a) to determine the impact of PTSD symptom severity on educational functioning after accounting for demographic variables, traumatic brain injury, and commonly co-occurring mental health conditions; and (b) to identify which symptom clusters of PTSD have the greatest impact on educational functioning. Educational functioning and other commonly occurring mental health conditions were assessed cross-sectionally among 90 student veterans. Traumatic brain injury and major depressive disorder (MDD) were initially associated with impaired educational functioning; however, after adding PTSD into the final model, only PTSD (β = .44, p < .001) and MDD (β = .31, p = .001) remained associated with educational impairment. Follow-up analyses indicated that the reexperiencing symptom cluster was most strongly associated with impaired educational functioning (β = .28, p = .031). Overall, these results suggest that PTSD symptoms—especially reexperiencing symptoms—may be a driving force behind impaired educational impairment, even after accounting for other commonly co-occurring mental health conditions.

This article examines cognitive processes engaged in situational understanding and outlines a framework for simulating such processes in computational systems ('machine situational understanding'). Discussion focuses on elucidating key distinctions between 'machine learning' and 'machine situational understanding', and apprehending limitations of conventional AI methods (learning, reasoning) in approximating the capacity for situational understanding and/or facilitating situational understanding in the human operators.

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