Interestingly, it would seem that the overall number of veterans with mental issues, such as depression, are still being undercounted by the U.S. government and the U.S. military.
Some years back, a much more independent report on the psychiatric needs of Americans in war zones, like Afghanistan and Iraq, was issued by the New England Journal of Medicine. The article was called “Combat Duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mental Health Problems, and Barriers to Care”, and it notes that there were in 2004 already 103,000 instances of mental health disorders among veterans at that stage, i.e. stemming from these two wars.
I really doubt the numbers have gone down annually since that time.
Moreover, the lack of sleep felt by soldiers—few of whom get their nightly ration of sleep while living and operating in war zones—reinforces both long and short-term psychological stress.
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan alone, up to 16 percent of U.S. troops have reported taking some sort of mental health medication.
The following abstract of a 1988 Science magazine article, “The Psychological Risks of Vietnam for U.S. Veterans: A Revisit with New Data and Methods” is sobering. If the Vietnam War-era rise in PTSD reported cases is matched, mimicked, or surpassed by those soldiers who have been involved in the Wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan in this decade, a re-run of heavy societal and financial costs is surely to be expected:
“In 1988, the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study (NVVRS) of a representative sample of 1200 veterans estimated that 30.9% had developed posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) during their lifetimes and that 15.2% were currently suffering from PTSD. The study also found a strong dose-response relationship: As retrospective reports of combat exposure increased, PTSD occurrence increased. Skeptics have argued that these results are inflated by recall bias and other flaws. We used military records to construct a new exposure measure and to cross-check exposure reports in diagnoses of 260 NVVRS veterans.”
That abstract continued as per its findings:
“We found little evidence of falsification, an even stronger dose-response relationship, and psychological costs that were lower than previously estimated but still substantial. According to our fully adjusted PTSD rates, 18.7% of the veterans had developed war-related PTSD during their lifetimes and 9.1% were currently suffering from PTSD 11 to 12 years after the war; current PTSD was typically associated with moderate impairment.”
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