Reintegrating Troops with Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI) into Their Communities: Understanding the Scope and Timeline of Post-Deployment Driving Problems
Abstract
Service Members (SMs), especially Soldiers, serving in Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), and Operation New Dawn (OND) use combat driving maneuvers to avoid roadway threats. These become automatic as they are performed repeatedly and are strongly linked to safety. A regional pilot study indicated that post-deployed Soldiers may have high levels of carryover behaviors and anxieties and that these behaviors are long-lived issues -- lasting for several months post-deployment. Reflecting Killgore, Cotting, Thomas, et al's. (2008) finding that general combat trauma influences risky behaviors post-deployment (including risky driving), driving carryover behaviors and anxieties regressed significantly on the level of Soldiers' OIF/OEF driving-related trauma. The current CDMRP study builds upon these findings, using a drop-off-mail-back survey to provide firm national data on the scale, incidence, and timeline of combat-driving behaviors among post-deployed Soldiers with and without mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) or mTBI with post-traumatic stress syndrome (mTBI/PTSD), and compares Postdeployed Soldiers to Soldiers who have not served in OEF/OIF/OND. The study's goals are to determine the extent to which combat driving tendencies are carried over into post-deployment driving on American roads by Soldiers with mTBI and those without mTBI, to separate driving behaviors associated with military service from those associated with brain injury or deployment, to examine the impact of dual diagnosis of mTBI/PTSD on driving carryover, and to establish military respondents' self-recognition of driving behaviors relative to an informed third party report as a measure of self-awareness. The ultimate purpose of the study is to describe behaviors and needs to allow appropriate post-deployment program development for Soldiers, families, and communities.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2011
- Accession Number
- ADA553763
Entities
People
- Erica Stern
Organizations
- University of Minnesota