By Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY
More than one in four U.S. troops
have come home from the Iraq war with health problems that require
medical or mental health treatment, according to the Pentagon's first
detailed screening of servicemembers leaving a war zone. (
Related: Troops screened as never before)
Almost 1,700 servicemembers
returning from the war this year said they harbored thoughts of hurting
themselves or that they would be better off dead. More than 250 said
they had such thoughts "a lot." Nearly 20,000 reported nightmares or
unwanted war recollections; more than 3,700 said they had concerns that
they might "hurt or lose control" with someone else.
These survey results, which have not
been publicly released, were provided to USA TODAY by the Army Center
for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine. They offer a window on
the war and how the ongoing insurgency has added to the strain on
troops.
Overall, since the war began, about
28% of Iraq veterans — about 50,000 servicemembers this year alone —
returned with problems ranging from lingering battle wounds to
toothaches, from suicidal thoughts to strained marriages. The figure
dwarfs the Pentagon's official Iraq casualty count: 1,971 U.S. troops
dead and 15,220 wounded as of Tuesday.
A greater percentage of soldiers and
Marines surveyed in 2004-05 said they felt in "great danger" of being
killed than said so in 2003, after a more conventional phase of
fighting. Twice as many surveyed in 2004-05 had fired a weapon in
combat.
"The (wartime) deployments do take a
toll," says Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a Pentagon spokeswoman. "We send
them to austere locations, places that are extremely hot, extremely
cold, very wet, very dry ... where they may also encounter an armed
enemy."
The Pentagon's goal is to identify
all troops in need of care in part by screening every servicemember on
a wide range of issues before and after overseas duty.
Begun in 1997 and expanded in 2003,
it is the most detailed health assessment of deployed troops ever. It
came in response to ailments that surfaced after the 1991 Persian Gulf
War. Jim Benson, a spokesman at the Department of Veterans Affairs,
says comparable data from previous wars don't exist.
In October 2004, a federal panel of
medical experts that studied illnesses of Gulf War veterans estimated
that one in seven suffer war-related health problems.
Benson said the percentage of troops
back from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with health issues is close
to the portion of former servicemembers coming to the VA for mental
health or medical care. He says 101,000 of the 431,000 war vets who
have separated from the military, or about 23%, have sought help.
