Service Members/veterans Research Articles

Efficacy of an adaptive kayaking intervention for improving health-related quality of life among wounded, ill, and injured service members

Adaptive sports are popular within military and civilian rehabilitation communities as a means to promote fitness, independence, self-efficacy, and return to participation in life roles. Although widely prescribed, there is little evidence to demonstrate the efficacy of such interventions. This study surveyed 40 wounded, ill, and injured active duty and veteran service members (SMs) who participated in a week-long adaptive kayaking program. Validated health-related quality of life instruments assessing physical and behavioral health domains following trauma were administered before and after participation in a week-long adaptive kayaking trip. Postintervention analysis of these measures revealed clinically significant improvements in depression (+7 percent), anxiety (+5 percent), posttraumatic stress disorder (+4 percent), and social interaction (+7 percent) subscales on the Trauma Outcome Profile (TOP) which trended toward, but did not achieve, statistical significance. Analysis of Veterans RAND (VR-12) data revealed a mean four-point improvement in participant mental health component summary (MCS) scores (p _ 0.05) following intervention indicating clinically and statistically significant improvement in behavioral health symptoms. No improvement was observed on the mean postintervention physical health component summary (PCS) score suggesting minimal short-term effects of kayaking on self-assessment of physical well-being. In aggregate, findings from this study suggest that adaptive kayaking may be an effective intervention to remediate behavioral health sequelae commonly experienced by SM following trauma. Future research should explore the effectiveness of adaptive kayaking relative to standard of care clinical rehabilitation strategies to optimize physical as well as mental health outcomes.