Autobiographical memory of war veterans: A mixed-studies systematic review

This paper reviewed articles on autobiographical memories of veterans who fought several major battles around the world. A total of 28 articles, reporting 11 quantitative, 16 qualitative, and 1 mixed-methods study, were identified through a search conducted in 11 major databases. Convergent thematic analysis of the findings extracted five recurrent themes: (1) memory features, (2) memory content, (3) self and memory, (4) culture and memory, and (5) theoretical accounts. Veterans’ memories were mostly aligned with the hegemonic narratives, although many of them were the depiction of atrocities (theme 1). Veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental disorders recalled less specific and less coherent autobiographical memories (theme 2); their retrieval was influenced by split identity—combatant versus veteran identity, generational identity,…