Two new medical studies have concluded that:

• Veterans who come home with post traumatic stress disorder are also at GREATER risk for developing heart disease;
• Children of deployed U.S. soldiers are 2.5 times MORE LIKELY to develop psychological problems than kids in the general population.

Please be aware of any symptoms or signs of trouble.  Our mission is to support Veterans and their families when they need it.  A part of that mission is helping them get the medical treatment and health services that they have been promised by our government.  Please contact us if you would like us to be of assistance.

 

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Veterans who come home from Iraq and Afghanistan with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental health diagnoses are hit with a double whammy: They also have greater risk factors for heart disease, according to a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

 

PTSD related to military service has been linked to heart disease in the past, but, to the authors’ knowledge, the present study is the first to examine the association for veterans of the current Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.

 

Given the time frame of the recent wars, the authors of the study did not look at heart attacks or other events, but examined risk factors for heart disease instead. PTSD and other mental disorders, such anxiety disorder, more than doubled the risk of tobacco use, for example, which is a well-known risk factor.

 

The study, by Dr. Beth E. Cohen and colleagues, from Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Francisco, included more than 300,000 veterans who began using Veterans Affairs healthcare from October 7, 2001 to September 30, 2008.

 

Most - 88 percent - of the subjects were male and the average age was 31 years.

 

About a quarter had PTSD. Among those who did, about half also suffered from depression, and more than a quarter suffered from anxiety disorder. About a fifth abused alcohol.

 

Men with mental disorders other than PTSD were at increased risk for all of the heart disease risk factors studied, including tobacco use, high blood pressure, obesity, and diabetes. All of those risk factors were also elevated in men with PTSD, except diabetes.

 

In women, PTSD was significantly linked to all of the risk factors studied. Other mental disorders were tied to all of the risk factors except diabetes.

 

SOURCE: JAMA, August 5, 2009.

 

FRIDAY, Aug. 14 (HealthDay News) About one-third of children of deployed U.S. Army soldiers are at high risk for psychosocial problems, mainly due to high levels of stress experienced by the parent who is still at home, a new study shows.

 

The research included the spouses (mainly wives) of 101 deployed Army personnel. Participants completed a series of questionnaires and provided information about their children, aged 5 to 12.

 

The researchers concluded that 32 percent of the children were at high risk for psychosocial problems. This doesn’t mean they had psychological problems, but that they were more vulnerable to developing such disorders. That rate is 2.5 times higher than among children in the general population.

 

The study also found that children of parents with high stress levels were about seven times more likely to be at high risk for psychosocial problems. Psychosocial problems were less likely among children whose parents received support from military organizations and among children of college-educated parents.

 

The study appears in the August issue of the Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics.

 

“Military, family and community supports help mitigate family stress during periods of deployment,” Dr. Eric M. Flake, of the Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, Wash., and colleagues, wrote in a journal news release.

 

Although support resources are currently more readily available to families on military bases, all families of deployed soldiers should be offered these resources, the researchers said. They also recommended that pediatricians and family doctors ask patients about parent and child stress in families with a deployed member of the military.

 

SOURCE: Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, news release, Aug. 11 2009