Wounds of War:
Wounds of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan include severe limb amputations, serious burns, vision and hearing loss, nerve damage, multiple bone fractures, orthopedic injuries, infections, spinal cord injuries, polytrauma, anxiety, traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder, major depression, and suicide. The following statistics depict the increased prevalence of the signature wounds of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:
Traumatic Brain Injury:·
Amputations:
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and Major Depression:
Suicide:
Wounds of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan include severe limb amputations, serious burns, vision and hearing loss, nerve damage, multiple bone fractures, orthopedic injuries, infections, spinal cord injuries, polytrauma, anxiety, traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder, major depression, and suicide. The following statistics depict the increased prevalence of the signature wounds of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:
Traumatic Brain Injury:·
- More than 300,000 U.S veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (20% of the 1.6 million) are estimated to have sustained a mild traumatic brain injury (Hoge, Goldberg & Castro, 2009) ·
- More than 31,000 service members from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan experienced a TBI in 2010 (Yamkovenko, 2011)
Amputations:
- As of February 2008, there were over 700 major limb amputations among U.S warfighters from Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqui Freedom (Melcer, Walker, Galameau, Belnap & Konoske, 2010)
- The number of amputations has increased dramatically in recent years, with 86 service members in Afghanistan in 2009 with major limb loss, 187 with major limb loss and 72 with multiple amputations in 2010, and with more service members with multiple amputations 9 months into 2011 than in all of 2010 (Yamkovenko, 2011)
- Reports suggest that two of every three service members with a combat-related amputation has at least one behavioral health condition (Yamkovenko, 2011)
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and Major Depression:
- Since 2001, self-report of symptoms of PTSD have tripled among combat-exposed military personnel compared to those who have not deployed (Smith et al., 2008)
- Approximately 300,000 military personnel previously deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan currently experience PTSD or major depression (Tanielian & Jaycox, 2008)
- About half (53 percent) of those who met the criteria for current PTSD or major depression had sought help from a physician or mental health provider for a mental health problem in the past year (Tanielian & Jaycox, 2008)
- Troops are seeing more-frequent deployments, of greater lengths, with shorter rest periods in between-factors thought to create a more stressful environment for servicemembers (Tanielian & Jaycox, 2008)
- With U.S. soldiers currently deployed for 15-month rotations, exposure to potentially traumatic events is lengthy, and traumatic stress symptoms may be particularly likely (Lapierre, Schwegler & LaBauve, 2007)
Suicide:
- Since the war began in 2003, the number of suicides among active-duty soldiers and soldiers on inactive reserve status has doubled, with 129 confirmed or suspected suicides in the beginning half of 2009, which is more than the number of American soldiers who died in combat during the same period (Goode, 2009)