Younger soldiers may have higher risk of PTSD

The following brief was posted in the Monitor on Psychology's May 2013 edition:

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Younger soldiers appear to be at greater risk for developing post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a study by Columbia University researchers. The scientists examined data from 260 male Vietnam veterans who had been diagnosed with PTSD. They found that men who were younger than 25 when they first went to Vietnam were seven times more likely to develop PTSD compared with men who served in Vietnam when they were in their 30s and 40s. The researchers also discovered that pre-war vulnerabilities, such as childhood physical abuse or a family history of substance abuse, were just as important as combat-related trauma in predicting whether veterans' PTSD symptoms would be long-lasting (Clinical Psychological Science, online Feb. 15).

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This raises a lot of questions.  Recently, there was an extensive and excellently written article in the Huffington Post detailing the stresses on the remote-control pilots of the drones that the military is using to target terrorists.  

The May 5 Huffington Post article details the round-the-clock stresses of deciding when it is, in the words of Ecclesiastes 3:3, a "time to kill" falls heavily on young men and women — airmen a few years out of high school — who are looking for signs that terrorists are present and civilians are not.  Air Force Major Shauna Sperry, the psychologist assigned to these airmen, said the airmen experience a sense of helplessness, and agreed with the notion of a kind of moral injury that occurs for them with regard to the orders they must follow.

"They are so young," Major Sperry reportedly said. "They do what they have to do, but there is a toll that is taken."

So we published this: