_____________________________ _____________________________ _____________________________ _____________________________ _____________________________ _____________________________ _____________________________ _____________________________ _____________________________ _____________________________ _____________________________ _____________________________ 30 THE OFFICER / JULY-AUGUST 2007 WWW.ROA.ORG Generations of researchers follow Soldiers at risk for PTSD. By Greg Widner, Rob Klemisch, Gary Collins, Rodney Haug, and Rumi Kato Price new report indicates that 35 percent of OIF/OEF veterans used mental health services within their first year of returning home. Although the cumulative number of OIF/OEF deployed military personnel reached 1.5 million as of August 2006 (with an estimated 2.5 to 3 million serving on active duty over the past five years since 9/11), this does not yet compare with the 3.4 million deployed to Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, from 1964 to 1973 (with a total of 8.7 million serving in the military). Given “War changed me forever.” Almost every combat veteran says this in retrospect. Generations of combat- exposed veterans as well as their families have struggled with the psychological toll war takes in the years aſter the fighting is over. Long before the term Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was coined in 1980, the psychological injury of combat trauma was expressed in such terms as “shell shock” and “war neurosis.” Psychological and physical consequences of multiple combat traumas are even measurable using archival military records of Civil War soldiers. While PTSD may be a relatively new term, its psychological symptoms are certainly not a new phenomenon. e veterans returning from the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are no exception to the risk of psychological injury. Charles Hoge and associates, in their landmark study of PTSD from the first cohorts of Soldiers deployed to Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom (OIF/ OEF), estimated that up to 20 percent were suffering from a PTSD-like syndrome aſter they came back. eir that a higher proportion is serving in theater, the magnitude of mental health problems of returning veterans of the current wars may outpace the Vietnam War if fighting and casualties continue at the current level. Generations of research teams at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Mo., have followed Vietnam veterans at risk of PTSD and substance abuse for the past 30 years. e Vietnam Era Study (VES) originated in a request from a research arm commissioned by the White House under President Richard Nixon’s A National Guardsman is participating in the long-term study on PTSD. His name has been obscured to protect his identity. (Photo courtesy of Washington University)