Abstract
BackgroundPsychological health is vital for effective employees, especially in stressful occupations like military and public safety sectors. Yet, until recently little empirical work has made the link between requisite psychological resources and important mental health outcomes across time in those sectors. In this study we explore the association between 14 baseline psychological health attributes (such as adaptability, coping ability, optimism) and mental health outcomes following exposure to combat deployment.MethodsRetrospective analysis of all U.S. Army soldiers who enlisted between 2009 and 2012 and took the Global Assessment Tools (GAT) before their first deployment (n = 63,186). We analyze whether a soldier screened positive for depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after returning from deployment using logistic regressions. Our key independent variables are 14 psychological attributes based on GAT, and we control for relevant demographic and service characteristics. In addition, we generate a composite risk score for each soldier based on the predicted probabilities from the above multivariate model using just baseline psychological attributes and demographic information.ResultsComparing those who scored in the bottom 5 percentile of each attribute to those in the top 95 percentile, the odds ratio of post-deployment depression symptoms ranges from 1.21 (95% CI 1.06, 1.40) for organizational trust to 1.73 (CI 1.52, 1.97) for baseline depression. The odds ratio of positive screening of PTSD symptoms ranges from 1.22 for family support (CI 1.08, 1.38) to 1.51 for baseline depression (CI 1.32, 1.73). The risk profile analysis shows that 31% of those who screened positive for depression and 27% of those who screened positive for PTSD were concentrated among the top 5% high risk population.ConclusionA set of validated, self-reported questions administered early in a soldier’s career can predict future mental health problems, and can be used to improve workforce fit and provide significant financial benefits to organizations that do so.
Highlights
Psychological health is vital for effective employees, especially in stressful occupations like military and public safety sectors
The first column shows that among the 63,186 soldiers included in the main analysis, 7% screened positive for depression symptoms and 11% screened positive for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Those who screened positive for depression post-deployment were more likely to be in the bottom 5 percentiles of the 14 psychological attributes at the baseline compared to those who reported no psychological health symptoms
Summary
Psychological health is vital for effective employees, especially in stressful occupations like military and public safety sectors. We are only aware of one other study that explored similar hypothesis—in that study the authors showed that soldiers who scored high on measures of psychological strengths, such as hope, optimism, confidence, and resilience prior to a combat deployment were less likely to be diagnosed with mental health or substance abuse problems once they returned home [15] Such insights can be used by the Army or other public safety organizations to develop strategies to recruit young workers who are fit, both physically and psychologically, or develop early interventions for those who might be at higher risk of developing costly mental health problems. We explore one potential strategy to achieve this goal by taking advantage of the new data that captured individual soldier’s baseline psychological attributes as part of the recently initiated Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness (CSF2) program by the U.S Army [16]
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