PTSD I Grieve Video for National Guards

It all depends on who is doing the study and the results come out based on how they do it. The going rate for PTSD for humans in general is one out of three, the next highest used rate is one out of five exposed to traumatic events. Factor in the redeployments increase the risk by 50% and then you can see how there could be such a huge number of PTSD veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. One more thing to consider is that National Guards and Reservist often have dangerous jobs when they return home. Many of them are in law enforcement and others are firefighters as well as EMT's. Many times they return from combat in Iraq or Afghanistan, back to their regular jobs but also as part of the National Guard, they are expected to respond to events in their own communities. Floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, snow storms and mud slides along with forest fires, will often put them under even more stress. Today we see them being called to act as border patrol and clean up of the coasts after the oil rig explosion.

These men and women have regular lives, with families to worry about and jobs to do to provide for their families, yet too often all the demands placed on them are not considered when they come home and receive even less help to heal than the active military members do. We need to do a better job supporting them for real!

PTSD Hits National Guard Soldiers Harder: Study
National Guard Soldiers Have Higher Rates of Mental Health Problems Than Others

By KRISTINA FIORE
MedPage Today Staff Writer
June 13, 2010
After combat duty in Iraq or Afghanistan , members of the National Guard appear to have higher rates of mental health problems than those in the Active Component, researchers have found.


Rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with serious functional impairment increased from about 7 percent to more than 12 percent over a nine-month period, compared with only about a 1 percent increase among those in the Active Component, according to Jeffrey Thomas of Walter Reed Army Institute in Silver Spring, Md. and colleagues.

The researchers reported their findings in the June issue of Archives of General Psychiatry.

"The emergence of differences ... likely does not have to do with the differences in the health effects of combat, but rather with other variables related to readjustment to civilian life or access to health care," they wrote.
read more here
PTSD Hits National Guard Soldiers Harder

From 2008

PTSD and Depression Increase in Veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars
SALT LAKE CITY— Rates of PTSD and depression are high and increasing among combat veterans of the current Iraq and Afghanistan wars who sought care from US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) medical facilities, reported Charles Marmar, MD, at the 133rd Annual Meeting of the American Neurological Association.

Despite evidence that the rate of VA specialty visits is increasing for veterans with a mental health diagnosis, as many as two-thirds of these patients are receiving minimal or no psychiatric care, according to Dr. Marmar. In the absence of widespread early intervention for specific subgroups of combat veterans, he believes that returning Iraq and Afghanistan servicemen and servicewomen with mental health problems will create a significant burden for the US health care system, including general medical services.

Dr. Marmar, Chief of Mental Health Services at the San Francisco VA Medical Center and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues assessed the electronic medical records of more than 206,000 veterans entering the VA health care system from 2002 to 2007. They found that one in three patients was diagnosed with at least one mental health disorder, and 41% were diagnosed with either a mental health or behavioral adjustment disorder. The diagnosis rate for PTSD was 20%, followed by 14% for depression, about 7% for alcohol abuse, and 3% for substance abuse.

For PTSD, no significant differences were seen between active-duty veterans and members of the National Guard or reserve units or between men and women. However, women had higher rates of depression than men did, and male veterans—regardless of whether they were in active duty, the National Guard, or reserve components—had nearly twice the rate of alcohol and drug use, compared with female veterans.
read more of this here
http://www.neuropsychiatryreviews.com/08nov/PTSDDepression.html

But then there is this report from RAND

Studies' Estimates of PTSD Prevalence Rates for Returning Service Members Vary Widely
In allocating resources to treat posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among service members, policymakers rely on estimates of how prevalent this condition is among troops. But published prevalence rates vary extensively and are often disputed. For example, the most frequently cited estimate for PTSD among Vietnam veterans — nearly 31 percent — is still highly criticized. Similar concerns have been raised about PTSD prevalence estimates among U.S. service members serving in Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and in Iraq as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF).
A team of RAND researchers analyzed the literature to document the extent of the variation in PTSD prevalence rates for military personnel who had served in OEF and OIF since 2002 and to identify possible explanations for these discrepancies. The team found 29 relevant studies and documented the following findings
read the findings here
http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9509/index1.html