People with depression often have serious medical problems, too. Post-traumatic stress disorder usually occurs along with depression—and other health problems. So a group of healthcare researchers looked at whether PTSD is worse for your health than depression alone.

What the researchers wanted to know: How does post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) affect women's health?

What they did: The researchers used data on women who responded to the 1999 Health Survey of Veterans, a giant (887,000-person) study of people who use services provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Four percent of the respondents were women, about 31,000 of whom were used in this study. (Researchers left out women with no data on mental health or with a history of schizophrenia.) The paper questionnaire asked, among other questions, whether a doctor had ever told them they had depression, PTSD, or any of a long list of conditions such as cancer and arthritis. Fourteen percent of the women had PTSD, most of whom also had depression; 25 percent had depression; and 61 percent had neither.

What they found: Women with post-traumatic stress disorder had more medical conditions than women who had depression only and women with no depression and no PTSD. Nearly all women with PTSD had at least one serious chronic medical condition such as arthritis, chronic low-back pain, obesity, high blood pressure, and chronic lung disease.

What it means to you: Patients with post-traumatic stress disorder may need even more medical care than patients with only depression—and care for a particular set of chronic diseases.

Caveats: Respondents might not have remembered their diagnoses accurately. Some women who said they didn't have depression or PTSD probably just hadn't been diagnosed. Also, the study doesn't prove that PTSD causes medical problems; it's possible that the medical problems contribute to the PTSD. And since women with schizophrenia—and nonveteran women—weren't included in the study, these results may not apply to all women.

Find out more: Veterans' health benefits and services http://www.military.com/

Read the article: Frayne, S.M., et al. "Burden of Medical Illness in Women With Depression and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder." Archives of Internal Medicine. June 28, 2004, Vol. 164, pp. 1306–1312.

Abstract online: http://archinte.ama-assn.org/