Depression Taking Toll on Returning... (he soldier's experiences once they retur...)

Depression Taking Toll on Returning U.S. Vets

Date:8/18/2007

he soldier's experiences once they return," said Deborah Gibbs, a senior analyst for the Children and Families Program at RTI International, in Research Triangle Park, N.C.

Gibbs led a study, published in July in the Journal of the American Medical Association, that found the children of soldiers who saw combat in Iraq were at heightened risk of abuse or neglect when their parent returned home.

In the new study, Sayers' team examined the home life of U.S. soldiers returning from service in either Iraq or Afghanistan. The soldiers had not suffered any grievous physical injury, but routine psychiatric evaluations, conducted upon their return, turned up signs of depression, PTSD or other mental woes.

About 40 percent of the veterans were either married or cohabiting with a partner, 21 percent were recently separated or divorced, and about half had at least one child.

Sayers stressed that the groups studied "are not representative of returning vets as a whole," but are a subset diagnosed with mental health symptoms after deployment. Those types of troubles aren't rare, however: One 2006 study found that one-third of U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are availing themselves of mental health services. And a government report released Thursday found there were 99 confirmed suicides among U.S. Army soldiers in 2006, the highest rate in 26 years. More than 25 percent of those who committed suicide did so while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the new study, a diagnosis of either major or minor depression, or PTSD, was highly correlated with family problems, the researchers found.

Those troubles included physical or mental abuse. For example, 56 percent of soldiers with current or recently separated partners reported severe conflicts with partners resulting in "shouting, pushing or shoving," and 35 percent felt their partner was now fearful of them.

Two-thirds of married or co-ha
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