But senior military psychologist says long dwell times best
By Ian Birch
A study, conducted by the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Centre in America, has shown that the longer forces personnel spend at home (“dwell time”) between deployments, and the greater the number of redeployments, then the greater the chance they have of developing a mental health condition.
These results, published in the Medical Surveillance Monthly Report, are based on data from the Defence Medical Surveillance System spanning an eight-year period. The study encompassed more than 1 million male and more than 150,000 female active-duty service members who deployed at least once in support of operations Enduring Freedom, Iraqi Freedom or New Dawn.
According to the report’s authors, longer dwell times may offer service members the opportunity to completely readjust to being home. It then may be more difficult to make the transition back to a warrior mindset on the next deployment. In contrast, service members who are home for a brief time may not fully adjust and, as a result, are better able to psychologically handle subsequent deployments.
Another possibility for the finding, they suggest, is that some service members may temporarily be unable to deploy again or may be delayed due to a medical condition, such as a mental health disorder, which can result in a longer dwell time.
Air Force Col. Christopher Robinson, deputy director of psychological health for the Defence Centres of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury suggested that the longer service members are home, the more likely they are to seek services or that a spouse or friend will encourage them to seek help.
Service members who have relatively short dwell times tend to keep their guard up, he explained, and may cover up symptoms or fail to seek help knowing they’re soon to deploy. But, the “longer they’re home and connect with people, the greater the chance someone will tell them they’re drinking too much or they seem depressed, if that is indeed the case,” he said.
“Rather than thinking that longer dwell times causes more mental health diagnoses, I’d rather think that longer dwell times give service members time to seek help appropriately,” Robinson said. This fits in with the data, he added, since it only reflects service members who received medical diagnoses of a mental health condition from a credentialed provider.
“I still stand by the notion that longer dwell times are helpful for the health of our service members.”
Other results included higher percentages of service members in health care careers being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. The proportion of health care workers with PTSD increased more sharply than those in combat occupations, the report revealed. In some cases, officials suggested, medical workers may be exposed to death and injury on more constant basis than those in combat occupations, and, as a result, are more susceptible to mental health issues.
Additionally, younger service members and female service members were diagnosed with a mental health condition more frequently than their older counterparts.
