Other mental health issues increase risk of PTSD
A recently published piece in Medical News Today, states that service personnel who had mental health issues prior to deployment were more likely to suffer with PTSD than those who did not.
The new study, lead by researchers from the United States Naval Health Research Center looks at the relationship between PTSD and mental health prior to deployment. Put simply, soldiers were followed over a period of time in order to guage differences in mental state.
Call me strange but I would have assumed that this was standard procedure? But sadly not.
The study proves, evaluation of pre-deployment mental health "might be useful to identify a combination of characteristics of deployed military personnel that could predict those more vulnerable"
The most surprising element about this research is that a nation is prepared to send any personnel into a war zone if they have an existing mental health issue of any description and that it took a study of this nature to determine that it ‘might’ be useful to identify these mental health issues in advance.
At least this study is proving a point that may go on to change policy? Let us hope that this study is proactive and not simply confined to the medical journals.
