Despite the recent study of military and veteran suicides ("Deployment Factors Are Not Related to Rise in Military Suicides, Study Finds," news article, Aug. 7), much is still unknown about the effect of repeated deployments and extended tours of duty on the disturbing increase in the suicide rate among the men and women who protect our freedom.
We predicted that the effect of combat deployment on physical and mental function would be influenced by multiple demographic, psychosocial, physiological and deployment factors.
Social support emerged as a potentially modifiable pre-deployment factor for mental function, and across both physical and mental function, increased physical symptom severity was an indicator of poorer post-deployment function even accounting for baseline function.
First, no study has used a prospective design to examine pre-deployment factors related to physical or mental function after deployment.
Moreover, it is important to identify, as we have done here, both pre- and early post-deployment factors that are associated with poorer physical and mental function to determine who is at greatest risk, and to determine which of these factors could be addressed by health care personnel or other caregivers.
There has been much research into comorbidities and decreased mental and physical health associated with symptoms of PTSD. 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 12 13 While we know that combat deployments significantly increase the likelihood of symptoms of PTSD, 18 19 38 43 44 little is known about baseline factors, screening factors before deployment, or modifiable factors associated with new onset PTSD.
Lastly, we added the deployment-related factors to the models, again with backward elimination until we arrived at final models of physical and mental function, respectively.
John Warehand of Thales says the London deployment was a factor in the sale, and is still contributing to "interest" in the missiles "from countries in the Middle East and Asia".
"This probably is the keenest misconception the public has: that deployment is the factor most related to the increased rates of suicide," said Cynthia Thomsen, a research psychologist at the Naval Health Research Center in San Diego.
Solving the problem entirely with nuclear means increasing deployment by a factor of 10, and if you calculate how many of these plants would have to be in countries like Sudan and Afghanistan, you are just not going to do it.
After a certain number of surface gateways, depending on underwater deployment and other factors, any additional surface nodes have negligible effect on the performance of the network.
