PTSD is Prevalent 1 Year After Injury

Results Support Early Screening of All Trauma Patients: PTSD is Prevalent 1 Year After Injury

Bruce Jancin


Clinical Psychiatry News

Jun 19, 2008

June 2008, New York - Posttraumatic stress disorder and depression are extremely common a full year after hospitalization for injury and are associated with up to a nearly sixfold increased likelihood of failure to return to work, according to the largest-ever U.S. study evaluating the multiple impacts of trauma.

The implications of these new findings from the National Study of Costs and Outcomes of Trauma (NSCOT) are profound. With an estimated 2.5 million hospital admissions for injury per year in the United States, the NSCOT data would suggest 500,000 of these patients will have debilitating posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) 1 year later, Dr. Douglas F. Zatzick said at the annual meeting of the American Surgical Association.

The economic, social, and health costs of this problem are such that screening for early signs of PTSD and depression should become routine during the acute hospitalization of all trauma patients, regardless of injury severity, according to Dr. Zatzick, a psychiatrist at the University of Washington, Seattle.
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http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/ArticleID/10427