Screening the Force: Modifying Psychological Screening for Deployed Soldiers
Abstract
Few would argue that the psychological monitoring of soldiers who deploy (e.g., to Saudi Arabia, Kosovo, Uzbekistan) is a responsible health prevention/promotion policy for the military medical community. Stressors are inherent in deployed environments and, in terms of deployment stress, researchers in the military community have demonstrated that these stressors are consistently related to many adverse health outcomes (e.g., Orsillo, Roemer, Litz, Ehlich, & Friedman, 1998). Thus, screening soldiers prior to, during, and after deployments is critical for identifying at-risk soldiers across all phases of deployment operations. Psychological screening is important in terms of ensuring quality mental health care both for the soldier and for the overall mission that could be adversely affected. There remain a few fundamental questions, however, about how to screen soldiers effectively. What is the best set of clinical screening instruments? How important are contextual variables in determining the best screening instruments? Is there a need to develop screening cut-off scores solely for a military population? How does one determine the efficacy of screening for the military? In this paper, we present a brief history of the US Army's psychological screening program for soldiers deploying to the Balkans. We follow this with a presentation of the current screening instruments used for deployed soldier mental health and propose modifications to the current screening instruments based on sensitivity analyses and contextual concerns. Finally, we test these modifications and present results and implications. In 1996, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Health Affairs mandated psychological screening for all military personnel redeploying from Bosnia.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 26, 2002
- Accession Number
- ADA410110
Entities
People
- James W. Ness
- Jeffrey L. Thomas
- Kathleen M. Wright