According to a new study, as many as one-third of U.S. military personnel in the war in Iraq received mental health services following their return home, and one in every ten were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
The U.S. military conducts population-level screening for mental health problems for all service members returning from Afghanistan, Iraq, and other locations.
Such information is important in order to gauge the mental health demands of war and to ensure adequate resources are available to meet the current mental health care needs of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
The latest mental health screening of veterans showed 21,620 out of 222,620 returning from Iraq and assessed over the year ending April 30, 2004, suffered from post-traumatic stress, a disorder that can lead to nightmares, flashbacks and delusional thinking and which often occurs after witnessing death or participating in combat.
The study by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Maryland, found that 19.1 percent of soldiers and marines who returned from Iraq suffered mental health problems such as post-traumatic stress or depression, compared to 11.3 percent among veterans who served in Afghanistan and 8.5 percent from deployments elsewhere.
Study author Col. Charles W. Hoge M.D., and colleagues carried out the study to determine the relationship between deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan and mental health care use during the first year after returning home.