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. It’s the first full week of the New Year for us and we spent it getting back up to speed. Let’s take a look at what we’ve got going on!
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:
● Military Medicine: Special Issue -- Women in Combat
● DOD and VA Health Care: Actions Needed to Help Ensure Appropriate Medication Continuation and Prescribing Practices (GAO)
While every provider may experience some initial discomfort with implementing an unfamiliar treatment, I am often surprised with how resistant many mental health providers are toward learning and implementing evidence-based treatments. An article on this topic by Scott Lilienfeld and colleagues demonstrates this resistance, reasons for it, and potential ways to work through it. I believe providers on all sides of this issue should read this article as a way to both consider another perspective and to clarify their own opinions.
The much-anticipated movie “Concussion” was released on Christmas Day, and already there is Oscar Award talk for Will Smith, who plays the role of Dr. Bennet Omalu. It was Dr. Omalu who discovered the tragic progressive degenerative effects of years of multiple concussions in NFL players, which he named CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy). The film highlights the NFL’s initial response of anger and denial. Indeed, since Dr. Omalu’s discovery in 2002, the NFL has experienced lawsuits, exposés, and finger-pointing in general.
30.4 per 10,000
and
107.8 per 10,000
The rate of “any chronic pain diagnosis” in 2007 and in 2014 "per 10,000 person-years" (p-yrs) among "all individuals serving at any time in the active component of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps between 1 January 2007 and 31 December 2014," according to a report in the December 2015 issue of the Medical Surveillance Monthly Report, published by the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Branch of the Defense Health Agency.