This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.

Alcohol abuse decreased among soldiers who killed during combat

Soldiers whose combat experiences included killing were less likely to abuse alcohol post-deployment, according to recent study findings published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

“Clinicians should be particularly aware of the distinction between those who were in combat and those who experienced the action of killing while in combat,” Cristel Russell, PhD, associate professor at the Kogod School of Business, American University, Washington, D.C., told Healio.com. “There may be particular mental health outcomes (some may be positive, as we encountered) that are specific to these types of experiences. If ‘killing’ is bundled with other kinds of traumatic experiences, one cannot pinpoint their impact.”

Cristel Russell

Russell and colleagues conducted anonymous surveys on 1,397 members of an Army National Guard Infantry Brigade Combat Team 3 months before and 3 months after deployment to Iraq in 2005 to determine the relationship between different combat experiences and alcohol consumption. The pre- and post-deployment surveys included information on behavioral health and alcohol use, and the post-deployment survey also included information on combat experiences during deployment.

Alcohol use increased from 70.8% in the pre-deployment period to 80.5% in the post-deployment period. Of those who reported not drinking pre-deployment, only 44.7% continued to not drink post-deployment, whereas 16.34% reported drinking post-deployment but not pre-deployment. No significant differences were found among age groups for drinking pre- and post-deployment (P>.05).

Alcohol misuse rates more than doubled after deployment, from 8.82% to 19.85%. However, no significant differences were found among age groups for misuse pre- and post-deployment (P>.05). Fifteen percent of participants reported misuse post-deployment but not before.

General drinking changes were not related to combat experiences. However, even though the overall trend was for increases in alcohol misuse, the data revealed that those who had experienced greater levels of killing combat experiences reported decreases in misuse.

“We reason that a possible explanation may be that soldiers who experience killing during combat become more aware of their own vulnerability to death,” Russell said in a press release. “Mortality salience is known to have effects on decisions that people make, including, in our case, the decision not to take risks and abuse alcohol, presumably to live longer. This is a post hoc explanation, and our future research is going to try and explore this intriguing explanation further.”

The researchers plan to further study the effect of mortality salience on soldiers who have killed while in combat.

“It is important for health care providers and researchers to better understand and account for the fact that traumatic events do not necessarily result in a negative outcome and that positive outcomes can, in fact, be born from traumatic events,” Russell said. “Building on these findings, future research should take into account the degree to which individuals are equipped to deal with stressful situations and assess how coping strategies may affect their behavioral response to potentially traumatic events.” — by Amber Cox

Cristel Russell, PhD, can be reached at Russell@american.edu.

Disclosure: The study was funded in part by the Military Operational Medicine Research Area Directorate, US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, Ft. Dietrick, Maryland.