1. Explain at least four specific warning signs of severe depression (not necessarily suicide).
a. Sleeping habits change– When a person suffers from severe depression you may notice a change in their normal sleeping pattern. Some people will sleep too much and others will sleep very little
b. Loss of concentration – A person can lose their concentration in all aspects of their life. This means that they are no longer interested in participating whether it be at work, school or home.
c. Eating habits change – Often you will find that people who suffer from severe depression have had a loss of appetite or a sudden weight loss may be noticeable. On the opposite spectrum of that ...view middle of the document...
Dwell time is the amount of time that a soldier is home between deployments. Dwell time is family time not just not deployed training time. The study was conducted on both male and female soldiers of the United States Marine Corp from the ages of 17-57. Subjects had either 1 or 2 deployments but no more than 2. There were 49,328 Marines in this study that were deployed only once and 16, 376 of those deployed a second time to Operation Iraqi Freedom. The study duration was calculated using the length of the deployment plus an additional year. This additional year was needed to view the study subject post deployment and dwell time.
The results of this particular study stated that the Marines with the longer periods of dwell time were less likely to suffer from mental disorders such as PTSD. It made no difference it they were male or female. The same was the case in other studies. It has been shown consistently that it affects both male and female soldiers across different Branches of the United States military. The lengths of the studies differed being that the deployment lengths ranged from 4 to 18 months. However, it was concluded that the soldiers with the longest dwell times available to them were less susceptible to PTSD and other mental health disorders. “Lack of an adequate dwell time may prevent the service member from fully recovering from the first deployment which suggests that a mental “reset” period is needed before subsequent deployment.” (VI, M.H. 2008) It would be easy to say that we should just give all of these soldiers additional dwell time in between deployments but that is not always realistic or possible during a time of war. Although you can see that based on the studies conducted we can substantially drop the number of soldiers being affected my emotion and mental disorders if we could at least give them adequate dwell time between deployments. The longer the deployments the longer the soldiers should have from dwell time with they return.
It has been shown in studies over and over again that soldiers are increasingly more susceptible to PTSD with each deployment they complete. As multiple deployments continue to take their toll on America’s soldiers, we have to wonder if their readiness ability, mentally and physically are being affected. A self-administered survey was collected from 2,665 National Guard soldiers, 2,543 of those surveys were analyzed for this study. These soldiers all had previously served a deployment in Iraq at some point in 2008.
Mental health risks were accessed in this study to help determine the New Jersey National Guards readiness. “National Guard and Reserve troops are more vulnerable than active-duty troops, with 35.5% of Guard and Reserve troops at mental health risks 6 months after deployment compared with 27.1% of active duty soldiers.” (Miliken, 2007) The resources and training available to active-duty military on a daily basis does not compare to what is available to the...
