Secondary traumatic stress has been documented in the spouses of veterans with PTSD from Vietnam. And the spouses of Israeli veterans with PTSD, and Dutch veterans with PTSD. In one study, the incidence of secondary trauma in wives of Croatian war vets with PTSD was 30 percent. In another study there, it was 39 percent. “Trauma is really not something that happens to an individual,” says Robert Motta, a clinical psychologist and psychology professor at Hofstra University who wrote a few of the many medical-journal articles about secondary trauma in Vietnam vets’ families.
This type of claim is a factual claim because it has evidence due to multiple studies on ptsd in families. The author backs up the fact that it is documented in spouses by giving the reader studies that support it.
“Trauma is a contagious disease; it affects everyone that has close contact with a traumatized person” in some form or another, to varying degrees and for different lengths of time. “Everyone” includes children. Which is something Brannan and Caleb lose not a little sleep over, since they’ve got a six-year-old in the house.
This type of claim is a casual claim because it is basically a prediction of what will happen to family members when one has ptsd. It has a cause and effect because it is saying if one of them has it then it will spread to other members.
Katie Vines, the first time I meet her, is in trouble. Not that you’d know it to look at her, bounding up to the car, blondish bob flying as she sprints from her kindergarten class, nice round face like her daddy’s. No one’s the wiser until she cheerfully hands her mother a folder from the backseat she’s hopped into. It contains notes about the day from her teacher.
This type of claim is an evaluative claim because the author is mentioning the daughter and how she is happy but she got into trouble at school that day. And it is evaluating katie’s behavior and what she did.
“It says here,” Brannan says, her eyes narrowing incredulously, “that you spit on somebody today.”
“Yes ma’am,” Katie admits, lowering her voice and her eyes guiltily.
“Katie Vines.” Brannan was born here in Alabama, so that’s drawled. “Wah did you do that?”
Her schoolmate said something mean. Maybe. Katie doesn’t sound sure, or like she remembers exactly.
This type of claim is also an evaluative claim because he is talking about Katie and her behavior.
One thing she’s positive of: “She just made me…so. MAD.” Brannan asks Katie to name some of the alternatives. “Walk away, get the teacher, yes ma’am, no ma’am,” Katie dutifully responds to the prompts. She looks disappointed in herself. Her eyebrows are heavily creased when she shakes her head and says quietly again, “I was so mad.”
This type of claim is an evaluative claim because here Katie is talking to her mother about what happened and why she spit on the girl to her mother, and this is proving the PTSD claims.
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Counterintuitive Fall 2022 
You’ve done credible work here, f0restrun, but let’s take a closer look at one of your sections and see if it contains more than one claim.
You call this a factual claim because the author has and supplies evidence to back it up, which is certainly true. But there’s more going on here.
Secondary traumatic stress has been documented in the spouses of veterans with PTSD from Vietnam.
—The author, Mac McClelland, is offering up somebody else’s proof. This technique both presents and argument and creates distance between McClelland and the opinion. She doesn’t say, “I assert the existence of secondary PTSD”; she says, “Others have documented this phenomenon.” So the factual claim is that somebody else documented the disorder. But you’d have to call McClelland’s claim something like an attributive claim since all she does is attribute the evidence to somebody else’s studies.
And the spouses of Israeli veterans with PTSD, and Dutch veterans with PTSD.
—These claims are likewise attributive and, I guess you’d say, accumulative since they’re just additional citations of similar studies. Notice how the technique cleverly adds a bit of evidence at a time to give the reader the impression that there’s a broad consensus of opinion on this odd phenomenon. There could be dozens of cases in which no “secondary PTSD” was determined to exist, but she doesn’t mention those.
In one study, the incidence of secondary trauma in wives of Croatian war vets with PTSD was 30 percent.
—This claim is attributive too, and but it shifts the focus of the argument. She doesn’t claim secondary PTSD here, just “secondary trauma,” which is quite different. She’s making a subtle categorical claim that secondary trauma is the same as “secondary PTSD.” Undoubtedly the spouses of returning veterans experience the trauma of living with damaged vets. But maybe the Croatian study did not claim the existence of a new syndrome “secondary PTSD.”
In another study there, it was 39 percent.
—This claim is attributive too, and makes the same subtle categorical claim. Sneaky. Clever. But it also might also undercut itself for careful readers. If two studies of Croatian vets found trauma but one found 33 percent more trauma, does that mean the studies are both convincing or that they contradict one another?
“Trauma is really not something that happens to an individual,” says Robert Motta,
—By now you’ll recognize this claim as attributive. But because it quotes someone else’s claim, you should point out that Motta is making a definition claim by identifying that trauma, presumably, is rarely isolated in just one person. We have to assume, MacClelland is hinting, that Motta means “trauma happens to the whole family.”
a clinical psychologist and psychology professor at Hofstra University
—This would be a credentials claim. It’s factual, of course, but not just that. It’s meant to give readers confidence in Motta’s authoritative opinion.
who wrote a few of the many medical-journal articles about secondary trauma in Vietnam vets’ families.
—This is also a credentials claim to further establish Motta’s authority, but also to establish that he’s not alone in recognizing the legitimacy of “secondary trauma in Vietnam vets’ families.”
That may appear to be slightly overboard, f0restrun, but the point of the exercise is to heighten your awareness of the persuasive functionality of virtually everything a writer says in a persuasive essay.
Does that make sense?