Report Chronicles The Rising Burden Of Military Mental Health Care

A study comparing the military’s health care burden during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq with its prewar burden found that hospitalization of active-duty troops for mental disorders accounted for 63 percent of the increases in hospitalization rates during those wars.

The report Friday by the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center calculated the difference between the total health care delivered to military members during wartime (October 2001 through June 2012) with that which would have been delivered if prewar rates had persisted during the conflicts. It found that relative to the prewar experience, mental disorders accounted for excesses of more than 6 million ambulatory visits, 42,000 hospitalizations and 300,000 hospital bed days -- increases of 35 percent, 63 percent and 48 percent, respectively.

The center, which conducts epidemiological and health surveillance studies for the Defense Department, analyzed treatment for 25 illness or injury categories for active-duty military personnel since Jan. 1, 1988. The study, “Costs of War: Excess Health Care Burdens During the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (Relative to the Health Care Experience Pre-War),” was published in the November issue of the Medical Surveillance Monthly Report released Dec. 7.