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Predeployment psychological screening may benefit soldiers

Predeployment psychological health screening may be useful to predict future mental health problems among soldiers, according to recent findings.

“We found that soldiers who had the worst premilitary psychological health attribute scores — those in the bottom 5% of scores — carried much higher odds of screening positive for depression and PTSD after returning home than the top 95%,” Yu-Chu Shen, PhD, of Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, said in a press release. “Soldiers who score worst before deployment might be more susceptible to developing debilitating mental health disorders when they are later exposed to combat environments.”

To assess associations between baseline psychological health attributes and mental health outcomes following exposure to combat deployment, researchers conducted a retrospective analysis of all U.S. Army soldiers who enlisted between 2009 and 2012 and took the Global Assessment Tools before their first deployment (n = 63,186).

When comparing soldiers who scored in the bottom 5 percentile of each attribute with those in the top 95 percentile, odds ratios for postdeployment depression ranged from 1.21 (95% CI, 1.06-1.4) for organizational trust to 1.73 (95% CI, 1.52-1.97) for baseline depression.

Risk for screening positive for PTSD symptoms ranged from 1.22 (95% CI, 1.08-1.38) for family support to 1.51 (95% CI, 1.32-1.73) for baseline depression.

Thirty-one percent of soldiers who screened positive for depression and 27% of those who screened positive for PTSD were among the top 5% high-risk population.

“In this study, we illustrate the potential value for psychological health screening such as [Global Assessment Tools] in public safety and national defense occupations,” Shen said in the release. “However, for any strategy based on screenings like this to be successful and effective, we also highlight the importance for future screening tools to be designed to detect and minimize strategic responding — that is personnel adapting their answers if they know that their career progression and chance of deployment may depend on their screening scores. Strategic responding may undermine the effectiveness of a screening tool in identifying the risk for mental health disorders.” – by Amanda Oldt

Disclosures: The authors report no relevant financial disclosures.