The percentages, respectively, of homeless female veterans and homeless male veterans who have experienced military sexual trauma (MST), according to "a cross-sectional study of 126,598 homeless Veterans who used VHA outpatient care in fiscal year 2010," recently published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
In a previous blog entry (entitled “New Experiences, New Perspectives - Improving Therapy Outcomes”), I discussed the clinical utility of having Service Members who have deployed work to integrate their deployment-related experiences into the self, versus suppressing and/or avoiding them. My discussion focused more or less on what might be accomplished in the individual psychotherapy situation. In this entry, I will briefly argue for its use in group psychotherapy, as I have seen improvements (i.e., a decrease in symptom presentation) in individuals’ general mood and dispositions related to their deployment experiences.
The number of same-sex couples "in the active-duty force," according to a recent Army Times article, Supreme Court strikes down DOMA. The Supreme Court's June 26 decision striking down the Defense of Marriage Act clears the way for married same-sex servicemember partners to access more than 100 different military benefits currently available to married couples, including military health care coverage, on-base housing, paying for the spouse who accompanies a military member "on a permanent change of station move."
Happy Friday everyone and welcome to this week’s edition of CDP News, where we take a quick look at recent happenings and upcoming events at the Center for Deployment Psychology. It’s been a busy few days as we prepare for the upcoming holiday-shortened week. The CDP has recently expanded our social media presence. While you’ve previously been able to follow the CDP on our Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn pages, we’ve decided to go even further and embrace new avenues of reaching out to behavioral health providers via social media.
The CDP's weekly research update contains the latest news, journal articles and useful links from around the web. Some of this week's topics include:
• The Primary Prevention of PTSD: A Systematic Review.
• A Multisite Analysis of the Fluctuating Course of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.
• Military Sexual Assault: An Ongoing and Prevalent Problem.
• Predictors of health-related quality-of-life following traumatic brain injury.
• A review of the adverse effects and safety of noradrenergic antidepressants.