The National Guard Combat Mental Health Initiative is the result of legislation I introduced in 2006 to study the effects of combat on our returning Ohio National Guard personnel who had been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Launched four years ago, the Combat Mental Health Initiative is the first effort of its kind in U.S. history — and most of the work is being done right here in our area. The principal researchers are located at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland and
right here at the University of Toledo.
The centerpiece of the initiative is an exhaustive study of Ohio Army National Guard soldiers who have been deployed in combat situations so we can begin to understand the long-term effects of their service and then apply the lessons learned on a national basis.
One result could be to learn the predictors of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD ) and other mental illnesses so we can possibly prevent them or at least offer more effective treatment.
The study design involves initial mental health assessments by telephone of 3,000 soldiers, in addition to 500 detailed assessments conducted in person by a mental health clinician. Each soldier would then participate for up to a decade with annual assessments.
As the researchers measure risk and resiliency factors that affect the soldiers’ responses to deployment, they can also explore underlying genetic predispositions to PTSD and other illnesses.
When our Guard soldiers come home, they return not to an active duty base with nearby hospitals and medical care, but to home communities that often lack medical services for careful follow-up diagnosis and treatment.
The findings from the Combat Mental Health Initiative will lead to new and improved treatments for veterans in Ohio and across the country.
We have already seen some findings that will improve treatments:
— Alcohol abuse is the most common lifetime psychiatric problem faced by those who have been deployed. Soldiers with PTSD and depression are most likely to begin abusing alcohol. They have a 46.7 percent chance of abusing alcohol, whereas a soldier with depression
has only a 24.3 percent chance and a soldier with PTSD has only an 18.4 percent chance. A soldier with neither depression nor PTSD has only a 7.6 percent chance. These findings are from soldiers who had no prior history of alcohol abuse.
— The level of help and training unit receives before, during and after deployment with preparedness, unit support and post-deployment support is associated with the odds of the members of the unit developing PTSD . High levels of help and training with preparedness, unit support and post-deployment support led to lower levels of PTSD .
O PTSD often does not occur alone — 61.7 percent of soldiers with PTSD also had at least one other illness, most commonly depression. Soldiers with PTSD were 5.4 times more likely to report having had thoughts of suicide than those without PTSD , but soldiers with PTSD and at least two other conditions were 7.5 times more likely to report having had suicidal thoughts than those with only PTSD .
“The Department of Defense has never conducted a long-term detailed mental health assessment of this cohort of soldiers,” said Dr. Joseph J. Calabrese, coordinating principal investigator of the Combat Mental Health Initiative along with Dr. Marijo Tamburrino, chairman of psychiatry at UT.
“Our returning soldiers benefit from this project because the knowledge obtained is quickly used to update training procedures. The leadership of the Guard uses this information to prepare soldiers to manage the mental health consequences of combat,” Calabrese said.
These findings and other results from the Combat Mental Health Initiative will help guide the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs as they provide service to the men and women who volunteered to serve our nation. They certainly deserve nothing less.
Rep. Marcy Kaptur, a Democrat, is the U.S. Representative for Ohio’s 9th Congressional District.
