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. March is shaping up to be one busy month!
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:
● PTSD Research Quarterly -- Forty Years After the War: How are Vietnam Veterans Doing Today?
● Federal Health Care Center: VA and DOD Need to Address Ongoing Difficulties and Better Prepare for Future Integrations. (GAO)
On a typical day driving in Washington, D.C., I spot two homeless men sleeping in tents beneath an underpass near the Kennedy Center and later see another disheveled man lying on a grate in front of a vacant storefront desperately trying to stay warm in Dupont Circle. The next day when I notice a person asking for change by the CVS near my apartment, I recognize his all too familiar face. “He’s been there for weeks,” I think to myself.
“Die woman, die!” These are the words of HM2 Jones (All patient material has been de-identified), a 30-year-old Navy FMF corpsman with two tours to Iraq, as he watches an Iraqi woman lay dying. She has just killed one of his Marines during a firefight, and he has just returned fire on her. Yet as the corpsman, his role now is to save her. “I wanted her to die. I was so angry. It bothers me that it doesn’t bother me, Doc. Is that wrong? Am I evil?” He continues to question his capacity for evil.
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The median number of outpatient visits (for any reason) for PTSD patients in the military health system, according to a recent RAND Corporation study -- Quality of Care for PTSD and Depression in the Military Health System: Phase I Report. According to a research brief based on the report, the median number of outpatient visits (for any reason) for depression patients is 30.