Treatment for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Military and Veteran Populations: Final Assessment

Extract

Foreword: The experience of overseas deployments, especially into combat environments, forever changes the lives of service members who are called into action. This military experience has consequences that forever affect the body, mind, and spirit. The experience involves operating, learning, bonding, adapting, and, for many, injury. One of these injuries has invisible, but present, scars. Its name is much younger than the phenomenon: posttraumatic stress disorder. This summary describes the many Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs programs being offered to service members with this condition and offers observations and recommendations on how access can be improved, treatments can be strengthened, and outcomes can be better tracked.

—Frederick Erdtmann, MD, MPH, Director, Board on the Health of Select Populations, IOM

INTRODUCTION

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is one of the signature injuries of the U.S. conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. An estimated 8% of current and former service members who were deployed to these areas have a PTSD diagnosis. For these men and women, readjustment from combat zone deployments and reintegration into families and communities may be significantly hampered by chronic distress and disability in physical, psychological, social, and occupational functioning.