War Vets Suffer Intensified Mental Distress Over Time, Study Finds

JIM LEHRER:

Now, the latest on post-traumatic stress disorder among veterans. Jeffrey Brown has our update.

JEFFREY BROWN:

A new report out today underscores the degree to which veterans returning from Iraq show symptoms of poor mental health. The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, looked at screenings done of military personnel over the course of six months after they return from the combat zone.

It found that one-in-five active-duty soldiers needed mental health care. For reservists, the numbers were even higher: Two out of five needed treatment.

For more, we turn to our health correspondent, Susan Dentzer. The Health Unit is a partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Susan, so this was an attempt to study soldiers at different times over the period when they first come back?

SUSAN DENTZER, NewsHour Health Correspondent:

Yes. In effect, Jeff, the military's attempts to tease out what's going on with mental health issues in combat veterans has evolved over the course of the Iraq war. Shortly after the start of the war, the military added a mental health screening component to a normal health screening that is done one month after people return from combat.

JEFFREY BROWN:

So very soon after?

SUSAN DENTZER:

Very soon after they return. Just last year, the Army went in and added an additional screening test that is done three to six months after people return.

And the effort was really to determine whether there are other issues that surface after people have been back for a while. And the answer that the study basically says is, yes, there are, that, in effect, what happened was that the rate at which people not only reported symptoms of depression or post-traumatic stress disorder — and clinicians actually verified that those symptoms probably were real and needed to be investigated — and actually were referred to treatment, that all of that happened at about a two to three times higher rate in the second screening that was done three to six months after returning from deployment versus what happened in the first screening.

JEFFREY BROWN:

Is it known why, why the numbers were so much higher later than at that initial one-month screening?

SUSAN DENTZER:

The study doesn't answer that, and we don't really know, but one can speculate. For example, one can speculate that rather young, mostly male soldiers when they return are so happy to be back that, for the first month, they're really focusing on being home, rejoining the family, and everything else, and that really it's only over a matter of time that things begin to surface.

Another, though, very important intervention that the Army has introduced is something called Battlemind. And you can actually, as a civilian, access this by going to www.battlemind.org and see a training tool that actually helps soldiers and others understand combat stress issues before they deploy, while they're in the field, and after they deploy.

And we also — the researchers, I should say, also surmise that maybe this itself is actually teasing out a little bit more of a response from people. Soldiers are actually doing what the Army doctors hope they'll do, which is recognizing that they have some symptoms that might be PTSD or depression, and actually being mobilized to report those and follow up with clinicians about them. And they view that as a very important, constructive development.