Abstract
BackgroundSince 1998, the U.S. Armed Forces has used the mandatory Pre-Deployment Health Assessment (PreDHA) screening questionnaire as a means of assessing the health and suitability of U.S. service members for deployment. Limited data exists to quantify the validity of the self-reported PreDHA. This study was conducted to assess the validity of self-reporting in PreDHA to identify deployed service members who have had a recent mental health disorder diagnosis.MethodsA retrospective cohort study was conducted on 15,195 U.S. service members deployed in support of combat and reconstruction operations in Afghanistan. The Defense Medical Surveillance System (DMSS), the DoD's longitudinal medical surveillance database, was queried to identify cases among the cohort with a recent diagnosis of a pertinent mental health disorder and to obtain those subjects' responses to the PreDHA.ResultsOf the study cohort, 11,179 (73.6%) subjects had a PreDHA available within the DMSS at the time of analysis. A total of 615 subjects (4.0%) had one or more mental health disorder diagnoses during the pre-deployment period. Out the 615 subjects with diagnosed mental health disorders, 465 had a PreDHA. Among these, only 224, not quite half, answered in the affirmative to the PreDHA question: "During the past year, have you sought counseling or care for your mental health?"ConclusionThis study demonstrates that the self-reported PreDHA has low validity for identifying service members with diagnosed mental health disorders. The development of electronic decision-support systems which automatically screen electronic health records to identify high-risk service members may prove a valuable component of improved pre-deployment screening processes.
Highlights
Since 1998, the U.S Armed Forces has used the mandatory Pre-Deployment Health Assessment (PreDHA) screening questionnaire as a means of assessing the health and suitability of U.S service members for deployment
Females had over twice the odds of having a recent mental health disorder diagnosis (OR = 2.26, 95% confidence intervals (CI) 1.82-2.80) as males (P < 0.001, χ2 = 58.09)
This study demonstrates that self-report by PreDHA has low validity in identifying members of the U.S military with a recent mental health disorder diagnosis
Summary
Since 1998, the U.S Armed Forces has used the mandatory Pre-Deployment Health Assessment (PreDHA) screening questionnaire as a means of assessing the health and suitability of U.S service members for deployment. This study was conducted to assess the validity of self-reporting in PreDHA to identify deployed service members who have had a recent mental health disorder diagnosis. BMC Public Health 2009, 9:376 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/9/376 mental health disorder might be a useful adjunct to the existing multilayered process of screening and selection that occurs during accession into the military [1] and during training and service prior to deployment [2]. The Pre-Deployment Health Assessment (PreDHA) screening questionnaire was introduced by the U.S Department of Defense (DoD) in 1998 as a means of assessing the health and suitability of service members for deployment [3-5]. The DMSS integrates information on pertinent service member demographics, inpatient and outpatient medical diagnoses at military and civilian medical facilities, and other pertinent health data [5,8], which permits robust epidemiological analyses of health conditions associated with military service
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
