• Jamie T Carreno-Davidson, Theresa N Faller, Melissa Richardson, and Tanja C Roy.
• Military Performance Division, US Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, Natick, MA 01760, USA.
• Mil Med. 2023 Aug 29; 188 (9-10): e3167e3172e3167-e3172.

IntroductionLess than half of service members with a behavioral health (BH) problem seek care. Soldiers may avoid seeking needed care because of concerns related to being placed on a duty-limiting profile and the related medical disclosures that follow.Materials And MethodsThis study used a retrospective population-based design to identify all new BH diagnoses across the U.S. Army. The relationship between diagnostic category, risk of being issued a duty limitation (profile), and time until return to full duty was also examined. Data were collected from a comprehensive data repository that includes medical and administrative records. Soldiers with a new BH diagnosis were identified from 2017 to 2018. All duty limitation profiles within 12 months of initial diagnosis were identified.ResultsRecords for 614,107 unique service members were reviewed. This cohort was mostly male, enlisted, unmarried, and White. The mean age was 27.13 years (SD = 8.05). Soldiers with a new BH diagnosis accounted for 16.7% (n = 102,440) of the population. The most common diagnostic category was adjustment disorder (55.7%). About a quarter (23.6%) of soldiers with a new diagnosis were issued a related profile. The mean length of these profiles was 98.55 days (SD = 56.91). Of those with a new diagnosis, sex and race failed to have an effect on the odds of being placed on a profile. Overall, enlisted, unmarried, or younger soldiers had greater odds of being placed on a profile.ConclusionThese data provide relevant information for both the service member who seeks care and command teams seeking readiness projections.Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States 2023. This work is written by (a) US Government employee(s) and is in the public domain in the US.

19 keywords...

hide…