Troops from the U.K. appear to have lower rates of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) than their American counterparts.
Despite prolonged combat missions to Iraq and Afghanistan there has not been an overall decrease in mental health for U.K. soldiers, a BMJ-British Medical Journal news release reported.
The researchers looked at 34 studies and found most U.K. soldiers who were in various forms of combat tended to come back from their deployment "psychologically resilient."
The rates of PTSD in U.K. troops were between 1.3 and 4.8 percent, compared to three percent of the general populations, Forbes reported. In U.S. troops the PTSD rate is between 12 and 23 percent.
For U.K. troops who had been in direct combat this number is higher; about seven percent of these soldiers struggled with PTSD.
These may results may be because American soldiers tend to be younger and come from lower income households. American troops also tend to endure longer tours of duty (most U.S. troops are deployed for 12 months compared with six months for U.K. soldiers).
PTSD can lead to symptoms such as depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. "Aggressive and violent behavior" is also common in these cases. "Good training, leadership and unit cohesion" is believed to help prevent PTSD, the news release reported.
Other techniques to calm the PTSD problem include third location decompression'(TLD), which is 36 hours of "social, supportive, and educational intervention" that takes place before returning home after a long deployment. Another technique is the Trauma Risk Management Programme (TRiM), which is "peer support designed to pick up vulnerability to mental health problems in the wake of a traumatic incident," the news release reported.
"The evidence presented [here] shows that, in the main, UK military personnel have remained resilient in spite of having suffered significant numbers of fatalities and casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan," the authors wrote according to the news release. "There appears to be some evidence that the considerable efforts the [U.K.] Armed Forces have made to ensure that deployed personnel are well trained, well led, cohesive, have access to high quality mental health services and a number of evidence based mitigation measures, such as TLD and TRiM, are important."
