> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.jacqualineroche.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Article 5 — The First Ring: What Households Carry - URL: https://www.jacqualineroche.com/article-5-the-first-ring-what-households-carry/ - Published: 2026-09-01T09:04:52.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-04T05:16:41.000Z - Description: What the research establishes about families. - Author: Jacqualine Roche - Tags: Secondary Trauma in Small Communities, Mental Health & Trauma *Versión en español:* [*Artículo 5 — El primer círculo: lo que cargan los hogares*](https://www.jacqualineroche.com/es/articulo-5-el-primer-circulo-lo-que-cargan-los-hogares/) --- The preceding articles concerned a single person. This one concerns the people who live alongside him. The evidence here is stronger than the evidence for the mechanism, and comes from a different literature entirely. ## What the research examines A 2007 study in the *Croatian Medical Journal* examined 56 wives of war veterans diagnosed with PTSD. Twenty-two met full diagnostic criteria for secondary traumatic stress — more than a third of the sample. > Any treatment offered to the veteran must also address the traumatisation of the family. ## What the finding means, and what it does not These were wives of combat veterans with diagnosed PTSD — not the same population as families living with quinoline injury. This series is not arguing the Croatian findings apply directly. It is observing that where a household lives alongside similar features — the nightmares, the hypervigilance — measurable effects on family members have been documented elsewhere. That is an inference by analogy, offered as one. ## The consistency of the boundary A 2017 systematic review screened more than 3,000 records and included 48 studies. Every one was confined to the household. That boundary is not a finding about where effects stop — it is a description of where research has looked. ## The question this raises A spouse shares a home. A child shares a home. A neighbour shares a wall. A teacher sees a child several hours a day, for years. These are lesser degrees of proximity than a marriage. They are not zero. The literature that documents household effects stops, consistently and by design, at the household door. What lies past it is not a finding. It is an absence of looking. --- ## Related reading - Previous in the series: [Article 4 — An Injury That Resembles Another](https://www.jacqualineroche.com/article-4-an-injury-that-resembles-another/) - Next in the series: [Article 6 — Established Rates, Unstudied Causes](https://www.jacqualineroche.com/article-6-established-rates-unstudied-causes/) - Series start page: [Secondary Trauma in Small Communities: Start Here](https://www.jacqualineroche.com/secondary-trauma-in-small-communities/) - [The Spouse: A Clinical and Social Profile](https://www.jacqualineroche.com/the-spouse-clinical-and-social-profile/)