18%
The percentage of the armed forces comprising officers, according to a new "In Focus" report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) -- Military Officers. The report explains the rank structure of the military and breaks it down by service branch. An "In Focus" report on Military Enlisted Personnel was released by the CRS at the same time.
Welcome to this week’s edition of CDP News! We like to use this space to review recent happenings in and around the Center for Deployment Psychology, while also looking ahead to upcoming events. We’re just barely into August, but we’re already looking ahead to the fall.
The weekly research update contains the latest news, journal articles and useful links from around the web. Some of this week's topics include:
● Risk of Suicide Attempt Among Soldiers in Army Units With a History of Suicide Attempts.
● Transgender Health Care in the U.S. Military and Veterans Health Administration Facilities.
● Mental and Physical Health Conditions in US Combat Veterans: Results From the National Health and Resilience in Veterans Study.
To facilitate a discussion about how to identify and assess for moral injury, let’s review the account below written by Ms. Tessa Poppe, who served in the Army National Guard as a Military Police Officer for seven years and was deployed to Afghanistan in 2010. It’s titled, When the Hardest Thing is Doing Nothing: Moral Injury Caused by Inaction in War and appeared in Foreign Policy on 12 June 2015. Through her narrative, Ms. Poppe paints a picture of a moral dilemma when she felt paralyzed about what to do while deployed and the inner turmoil associated with it.
940,000
The number of VA disability claims related to PTSD, according to a recent article in Military Times -- PTSD disability claims by vets tripled in the last decade.