ON THE AGAINST PTSD FRONT LINES


USAMRMC leads the way in research to prevent, diagnose and treat service members’ psychological injuries.


by Col. Dennis McGurk, Lt. Cmdr. Christopher Steele, Capt. Leonard D. Skipper, Dr. Ronda Renosky and Dr. Ronald L. Hoover P


ost-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been called one of the “signature wounds” of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Te U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC) has been at the forefront of documenting the prevalence and impact of PTSD on Soldiers and the joint warfighter, and developing interventions to


prevent or address it.


USAMRMC is the Army’s medical materiel developer, with responsibility for research, develop- ment and acquisition and medical logistics management. In 2004, researchers from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR), a subcommand of USAMRMC, published a study in the New England Journal of Medicine indicating that roughly 20 percent of Soldiers in several brigade combat teams (BCTs) met screening criteria for symptoms consistent with PTSD follow- ing deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. A 2010 study showed that 24 percent of Soldiers in a different BCT met screening criteria for PTSD 12 months after returning from a combat deploy- ment to Iraq.


Tese and other studies, in addition to continued tracking by the Armed Forces Health Surveil- lance Branch of the Defense Health Agency’s Public Health Division, show that the impact of PTSD continues to be a strain on our Soldiers, more than 35 years after the American Psychi- atric Association officially recognized PTSD in the third edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published in 1980.


ASC.ARMY.MIL 69


SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY


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