Depression Taking Toll on Returning...(bitating veterans said that several epis...),Health

That's a common scenario, Gibbs said.

"Research from the '90s that came about as a result of the Desert Storm deployments gave us a lot of evidence of issues like this, evidence of behavioral problems by children, anxiety on the part of spouses and of how difficult it is for everyone to adjust to new roles, or a change in roles, once a soldier returns," she explained.

Often, children have changed over a deployment and a returning parent may not understand this, Gibbs said. "Time doesn't stand still for families. Especially adolescents, who change so quickly in the space of a year -- you can expect it to be very tough [sometimes] for parents and adolescents to get back in tune with each other," she said.

A veterans' family may not understand how the war has changed him or her, either. "They may anticipate that the veteran will be happy, like the old person that went off to war," Sayers said.

He stressed that because the men and women in the study had not had a psychiatric assessment prior to their deployment, it is impossible to tell if the depression was caused by the war.

"I'm certainly not saying in the study that what they are feeling is directly attributable to their war experiences," Sayers said. "However, we do know that increased exposure to wartime trauma does increase risk for all kinds of mental-health issues."

The important thing, the experts said, is to recognize problems early and get veterans the help they need.

That's not always easy, though, because "one of the hallmarks of depression is that people may not recognize that it's a problem that they can get help with," Gibbs pointed out.

That's where the support of family and friends comes in, the experts said.

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