| Stress Found in Returning Soldiers, Trauma from Iraq, Afghanistan Studied July 1, 2004 A noisy crowd of several hundred Iraqis standing around looking for work suddenly went silent. The crowd parted to let two people through. A desperate woman wearing a black robe and her young son walked up to Alan Lewis, a U.S. soldier who was working security. The boy had just picked up an unexploded piece of ordnance, which blew up, badly burning his face and hands. "It was just so sad," Lewis said. "He wanted to cry, but he couldn't." Lewis summoned medics, who only could put cream on the boy's face and direct the mother to a nearby civilian hospital. Weeks later, Lewis would lose parts of both of his legs after a land mine exploded under the Humvee he was driving. But his most horrible experience, Lewis said, was the sight of the boy and his mother. "I wanted to go into the Army and serve my country," said Lewis, now back in Milwaukee. "That was a 9-year-old boy. He just wanted to live his life." A new study suggests that such scenes are all-too-common among members of the military serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a result, 17 percent of Army and Marine members who served in Iraq and 11 percent who served in Afghanistan were found to be suffering from psychiatric problems such as post traumatic stress disorder, according to the study appearing today in the New England Journal of Medicine. And that may be an underestimate, because many soldiers suffering emotional trauma feel stigmatized and do not seek treatment for fear that it could harm their careers or cause them to be viewed as weak, according to Dartmouth Medical School professor of psychiatry Matthew Friedman, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study. Psychiatric disorders actually may increase now that the Iraq conflict has shifted from a traditional war to a conflict with insurgents, said Friedman, who also serves as executive director of the VA's National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In addition, the practice of extending the tours likely will aggravate the situation, he said in an interview. The study is the first in-depth look at the mental health of those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among its findings:
The new study involved 6,200 members of four U.S. combat infantry units deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, an estimated 8 percent of Americans suffered from the disorder, a condition that involves a group of long-lasting symptoms and psychological reactions. People who have it may re-experience the event in nightmares or have intrusive, uncontrollable thoughts in response to things that remind them of the event, such as a Vietnam veteran reacting to the sound of a helicopter. Copyright 2004 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel/ Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. All Rights Reserved. |
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