Prevalence study of mental disorders in Georgian military personnel participating in peace-keeping missions

Abstract

IntroductionDue to the professional activities acute stress disorder and PTSD are most diffuse disorders among military servants. Number of studies revealed relationships between post-traumatic stress and depression, anxiety or somatic complaints.ObjectiveThough Georgian military personnel actively take part in the international peacekeeping missions since 2004 and no research was conducted to investigate the prevalence of abovementioned disorders.AimsThus, this study aims to investigate the prevalence of PTSD, depression, anxiety and somatic complaints in the cohort of Georgian military servants.MethodThe research participants were 2799 military servicemen who had been deployed on the 6 month long period to the peace-keeping missions and were screened for psychological problems after deployment. All of them were Caucasian males, with average age of 29.3 years. All participants were asked to complete a PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5), as well as a 15-item somatic subscale of the Patient History Questionnaire (PHQ-15), a 9-item depression subscale of the Patient History Questionnaire (PHQ-9), a 7-item anxiety subscale of the Patient History Questionnaire (GAD-7).ResultsPrevalence rate of probable PTSD screened by the PCL-5 was 2.7%. Further investigation showed that depressive, anxiety and somatic symptoms among them was 21.6%, 8.7% and 21.7% respectively.ConclusionAppreciable positive relationship was found (r = 0.65–0.70; P < 0.001) between these variables in the deployed military servants. Therefore, it is recommended that military servants should be screened on all above mentioned conditions along with PTSD, in order to see full picture of co-morbid problems.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.