A Dynamic Model of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for Military Personnel and Veterans

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) stands out as a major mental illness; however, little is known about effective policies for mitigating the problem. The importance and complexity of PTSD raise critical questions: What are the trends in the population of PTSD patients among military personnel an...

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Main Authors:	Ghaffarzadegan, Navid, Ebrahimvandi, Alireza, Jalali, Mohammad S.
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Public Library of Science 2016
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5055362/

id	pubmed-5055362
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-50553622016-10-27 A Dynamic Model of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for Military Personnel and Veterans Ghaffarzadegan, Navid Ebrahimvandi, Alireza Jalali, Mohammad S. Research Article Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) stands out as a major mental illness; however, little is known about effective policies for mitigating the problem. The importance and complexity of PTSD raise critical questions: What are the trends in the population of PTSD patients among military personnel and veterans in the postwar era? What policies can help mitigate PTSD? To address these questions, we developed a system dynamics simulation model of the population of military personnel and veterans affected by PTSD. The model includes both military personnel and veterans in a “system of systems.” This is a novel aspect of our model, since many policies implemented at the military level will potentially influence (and may have side effects on) veterans and the Department of Veterans Affairs. The model is first validated by replicating the historical data on PTSD prevalence among military personnel and veterans from 2000 to 2014 (datasets from the Department of Defense, the Institute of Medicine, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and other sources). The model is then used for health policy analysis. Our results show that, in an optimistic scenario based on the status quo of deployment to intense/combat zones, estimated PTSD prevalence among veterans will be at least 10% during the next decade. The model postulates that during wars, resiliency-related policies are the most effective for decreasing PTSD. In a postwar period, current health policy interventions (e.g., screening and treatment) have marginal effects on mitigating the problem of PTSD, that is, the current screening and treatment policies must be revolutionized to have any noticeable effect. Furthermore, the simulation results show that it takes a long time, on the order of 40 years, to mitigate the psychiatric consequences of a war. Policy and financial implications of the findings are discussed. Public Library of Science 2016-10-07 /pmc/articles/PMC5055362/ /pubmed/27716776 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0161405 Text en © 2016 Ghaffarzadegan et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Ghaffarzadegan, Navid Ebrahimvandi, Alireza Jalali, Mohammad S.
spellingShingle	Ghaffarzadegan, Navid Ebrahimvandi, Alireza Jalali, Mohammad S. A Dynamic Model of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for Military Personnel and Veterans
author_facet	Ghaffarzadegan, Navid Ebrahimvandi, Alireza Jalali, Mohammad S.
author_sort	Ghaffarzadegan, Navid
title	A Dynamic Model of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for Military Personnel and Veterans
title_short	A Dynamic Model of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for Military Personnel and Veterans
title_full	A Dynamic Model of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for Military Personnel and Veterans
title_fullStr	A Dynamic Model of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for Military Personnel and Veterans
title_full_unstemmed	A Dynamic Model of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for Military Personnel and Veterans
title_sort	dynamic model of post-traumatic stress disorder for military personnel and veterans
description	Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) stands out as a major mental illness; however, little is known about effective policies for mitigating the problem. The importance and complexity of PTSD raise critical questions: What are the trends in the population of PTSD patients among military personnel and veterans in the postwar era? What policies can help mitigate PTSD? To address these questions, we developed a system dynamics simulation model of the population of military personnel and veterans affected by PTSD. The model includes both military personnel and veterans in a “system of systems.” This is a novel aspect of our model, since many policies implemented at the military level will potentially influence (and may have side effects on) veterans and the Department of Veterans Affairs. The model is first validated by replicating the historical data on PTSD prevalence among military personnel and veterans from 2000 to 2014 (datasets from the Department of Defense, the Institute of Medicine, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and other sources). The model is then used for health policy analysis. Our results show that, in an optimistic scenario based on the status quo of deployment to intense/combat zones, estimated PTSD prevalence among veterans will be at least 10% during the next decade. The model postulates that during wars, resiliency-related policies are the most effective for decreasing PTSD. In a postwar period, current health policy interventions (e.g., screening and treatment) have marginal effects on mitigating the problem of PTSD, that is, the current screening and treatment policies must be revolutionized to have any noticeable effect. Furthermore, the simulation results show that it takes a long time, on the order of 40 years, to mitigate the psychiatric consequences of a war. Policy and financial implications of the findings are discussed.
publisher	Public Library of Science
publishDate	2016
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5055362/
_version_	1613677152786448384

A Dynamic Model of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for Military Personnel and Veterans

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