Iraq War Takes Unique Toll on National Guard

By Marilyn Elias

SAN FRANCISCO — Despite signs that the war in Iraq is taking a toll on National Guard troops’ mental health, members are no more likely than active-duty soldiers to develop post-traumatic stress, psychologists reported over the weekend.

But financial problems are creating emotional pain. Deployment-linked money trouble raises the odds sixfold that a National Guard soldier will have mental-health problems after leaving Iraq, studies from a team at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research suggest. The researchers spoke at the American Psychological Association conference here.

More than 400,000 National Guard troops have served in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a congressional report.

There’s some evidence the National Guard deployed in earlier wars had higher rates of mental disorders than other soldiers, researcher Lyndon Riviere says. But no current studies, using controls for pre-deployment post-traumatic stress, have examined their mental health, he says.

The new research compared how 276 Guard soldiers and 432 active-duty soldiers fared after deployment. More troops on active duty faced dangerous combat experiences, such as being ambushed and receiving small-arms fire. Such exposure raises the risk for post-trauma stress a few months after leaving Iraq, Riviere says.

But having symptoms before leaving was almost as important as combat in predicting who would have the disorder after deployment. Being married also increased its odds, possibly the result of family problems created by deployment. And National Guard troops, who are older and more likely to be married, also had higher disorder levels before going to war, Riviere says.

Taking these differences into account, National Guard service members were no more likely than active-duty soldiers to have developed post-traumatic stress disorder while in Iraq, he says.

Money problems related to deployment, which affected 26% of Guard soldiers, had a greater correlation with later mental-health disorders than combat, says researcher Athena Kendall-Robbins.

Some studies suggest Guard members seek mental-health treatment at higher rates than active-duty soldiers after deployment, “but we’re not sure if that will persist,” says Shelley MacDermid, director of the Military Family Research Institute at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. She co-chaired a task force on military mental health whose report came out in June.

“Guard members do have problems that set them apart,” she says. “They haven’t trained as much before going over, their spouses may be more anxious than active-duty military and find it harder to get support in their neighborhoods. … There’s also the potential for financial difficulties.”

MacDermid recommends that Guard soldiers and their families visit militaryonesource.com for more information. (c) Copyright 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.