Wisconsin Community Mental Health Counseling Centers, Inc.

It is safe to assume that all soldiers are impacted by their experiences in war. For many, surviving the challenges of war can be rewarding, maturing, and growth-promoting (e.g., greater self-efficacy, enhanced identity and sense of purposefulness, pride, camaraderie, etc.). The demands, stresses and conflicts of participation in war can also be traumatizing, spiritually and morally devastating, and transformative in potentially damaging ways, the impact of which can be manifest across the lifespan. About 20 percent of returning U.S. soldiers have post-traumatic stress disorder or depression, and only half of them receive treatment. About 1.6 million U.S. troops have fought in the two wars since October 2001 and nearly 5,000 soldiers have died in the conflicts.

Up to 29 percent of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan will suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, predicts Col. Charles Engel, a clinician at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. As of August, the VA had diagnosed 63,767 discharged veterans with a mental disorder and 34,380 with post-traumatic stress disorder. Experts say the rate of the disorder among Iraq veterans could well eclipse the 30 percent lifetime rate found in a 1990 study of Vietnam veterans because military personnel are being deployed longer and more often to Iraq and because greater awareness of the disorder among doctors will lead to more diagnoses.

Some statistics show the cases climbing fast. The number of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who have sought help for readjustment concerns including post-traumatic stress disorder doubled between October 2005 and June 2006, according to a recent survey of 60 VA-run centers by the Democratic staff of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs. That increase has made it only more difficult to get quality care, the survey found. Among active-duty military personnel who served in Iraq, 35 percent used military mental health care services in the year after coming home and 12 percent were diagnosed with a mental health problem, a study published in March in the Journal of the American Medical Association found.