Invisible wounds don’t discriminate by gender, study finds
FALLS CHURCH, Va.
A significant number of military women injured in combat-related events subsequently experienced invisible wounds such as post-traumatic stress and anxiety, according to a recent Naval Health Research Center study. Further, women in the enlisted ranks were more likely than female officers to receive these mental health diagnoses.
The NHRC study is one of the first to focus solely on military women, said Mike Galarneau, director of operational readiness research at the NHRC, in San Diego. However, other studies have explored mental health diagnoses in combat veterans overall as well as in the active-duty population. For example, a RAND Corp. study found that about 31 percent of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have a mental health condition or reported experiencing a traumatic brain injury.
A study by the Psychological Health Center of Excellence found that mental health disorders among service members overall increased from approximately 9 percent in 2005 to almost 17 percent in 2013, before declining to about 15 percent in 2016.
https://www.militarynews.com/news/invisible-wounds-don-t-discriminate-by-gender-study-finds/article_822c4ae8-2009-11e9-86ca-3317cd479565.html
