One in Four Army Recruits Show Signs of Mental Illness

It has long been known that discharged and frequently deployed soldiers have a standing history of being more prone to mental illness than the average United States citizen. Post traumatic stress disorder and major depression are two mental illnesses that have been found to most commonly effected our country's heroes over the last decades. However, a new study argues that one in four soldiers have some sort of classifiable mental illness even prior to first deployment.

According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Psychiatry, 25.1 percents of undeployed soldiers meet minimal criteria for any single mental disorder, including major depression, panic disorder, ADHD, and generalized anxiety.

The study was part of a larger three part study investigating the mental health and quality of life among U.S. armed forces. According to JAMA, who published the study, this was the largest study of its kind ever conducted. Mostly, the complete study provides concrete numbers for what we already know. Deployed soldiers, frequently away from home and in high-stress situations, are prone to major depression and even symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Some of these soldiers will eventually be discharged so they can be treated for their illnesses back in the U.S.

However, one smaller study among the three assessed the mental health of soldiers who had never been deployed. A sample group of 5,428 undeployed soldiers were asked to fill out and questionnaire, and their answers and past psychiatric histories were analyzed. What researchers found was alarming, with five percent having serious signs of depression, 8 percent having thought about killing themselves in the past, and 1.1 percent having a past suicide attempt. Disorders that inhibit societal interaction, such as hyperactivity disorders, anxiety disorders, and anger management issues were also found to significantly higher in recruited solders compared to the norm for the general population. A striking eight percent of soldiers enter the Army with intermittent explosive disorder, a mental illness that causes attacks of anger that is difficult to control. Only 1.3 percent of the nation supposedly has this disorder, which then begs the question, "how did so many make it into the Army?"

Of course, the answer is simple. The Army has to rely mostly on the word of its applicants where perfuming mental illness screenings. What a person may be comfortable telling a scientific researcher in an anonymous questionnaire is certainly not the same as what they might tell Army psychiatrists.

The study was published on March 3 alongside two related studies in JAMA Psychiatry.

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