Deployment Psychology Blog

CDP News: May 17, 2013

By Christopher Adams  on 17.05.2013 7:42 am

Happy Friday everyone and welcome to the latest edition of CDP News! Looking back over the week, it was another busy one around the Center for Deployment Psychology. We had two teams presenting two separate, but overlapping, events for our University Counseling Center Core Competency program this week. On Wednesday and Thursday, Dr. Holly O’Reilly and Laura Copland traveled down to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to instruct attendees on Cognitive Processing Therapy as part of the UC4-Extended program. Then on Thursday, Dr. Kevin Holloway and Dr. Jenna Ermold visited Illinois State University in Normal, IL to deliver the core UC4 program.

Research Update: May 16, 2013

By Shirl Kennedy  on 16.05.2013 7:42 am

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:

• Department of Defense Instruction: Mental Health Evaluations of Members of the Military Services.
• Screening for and Treatment of Suicide Risk Relevant to Primary Care: A Systematic Review for the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.
• Psychological and Pharmacological Treatments for Adults With Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). (AHRQ)
• Interventions for the Prevention of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in Adults After Exposure to Psychological Trauma. (AHRQ)

Staff Voices: Primary Care - A Vital Front in Behavioral Health

By Diana Dolan  on 15.05.2013 7:42 am

For many mental health providers, the focus on providing evidence-based treatments for deployment-related issues allows us to improve treatment outcomes for the patients in front of us. However, what about the patients who never make it to our door? While we know that many Service Members and Veterans are not likely to seek out specialty mental health care, patients do have regular contact with their primary care providers (PCPs).For many Service Members, the primary care clinic is the only contact with medical care, the place where the rubber meets the road, and all health care gets done.

By the Numbers

By Shirl Kennedy  on 15.05.2013 7:42 am

$138 million

The amount that would be saved in "social costs" (lost productivity, mental health treatment, and suicides) over a two year period following "implementation of evidence-based treatments" for PTSD and depression, according to a recent journal article -- Challenges and Successes in Dissemination of Evidence-Based Treatments for Posttraumatic Stress: Lessons Learned From Prolonged Exposure Therapy for PTSD. According to the article, which appeared in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, that figure represents a reduction of roughly 15% in the total social costs of PTSD and depression over a two-year period in veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, calculated by health economists at  approximately $950 million.

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