Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Hartford Courant
May 17, 2007
Pg. 1
Women in combat cope as well as men, military finds
By Lisa Chedekel, Courant Staff Writer
Female soldiers in Iraq are holding up under the stress of combat at rates similar to men, a new Pentagon study shows, dispelling predictions that gender would play a significant role in the incidence of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder among troops.
"We found no evidence that female soldiers are less able than male soldiers to cope with the stressors and challenges of serving in combat,'' a team of military mental-health experts concluded in a new report based on extensive surveys of troops in Iraq. "When discussing the role of the female soldier in combat, the focus needs to move away from one of weakness and vulnerability, to one of strength and accomplishment.''
The report by the military's Mental Health Advisory Team found that women experienced higher rates of depression, anxiety and PTSD when serving in "low-combat'' settings. But those differences dissipated in situations where both sexes were exposed to moderate or ``medium'' levels of combat. Overall, about 19 percent of both female and male soldiers surveyed screened positive for PTSD symptoms, and 8 percent screened positive for depression.
"Female soldiers are no more vulnerable than male soldiers in how combat can affect their mental health and well-being,'' the team reported.
Past research shows that women in the general population are more likely to suffer from PTSD than men, but the new study indicates that the gender gap shrinks when men and women serve together in high-risk settings. Veterans' advocates and some mental-health experts aren't surprised, saying there is no inherent reason women would be less resilient than men in coping with war-zone stresses.
"In this war, women are really there on the line with men. They're part of the same units, living by the same professional codes, going through the same hell,'' said Linda Schwartz, the state's commissioner of veterans affairs, who was an Air Force nurse during the Vietnam War. "With the intensity of this situation and the [repeat deployments], the women over there have had to pull their own weight and prove themselves,'' while those unable to cope with the stresses of combat may have left the military.
One of the reasons women in Iraq were expected to have higher rates of depression and PTSD is that they are more likely to have experienced sexual assault and harassment, which remain pervasive problems in the military.
Experts say those stresses may help explain why women in "low combat'' settings have higher rates of mental health problems.
But when both sexes serve in higher-risk combat settings, those other stresses appear to become less significant.
"In the medium combat setting, the stressor [of imminent danger] becomes intense enough that those gender differences are erased,'' said Amy Street, a clinical psychologist in the women's health sciences division of the National Center for PTSD in Boston.
Military researchers reached a similar conclusion in a study of women in combat published earlier this year in the International Journal of Epidemiology.
That study found that mental-health data from troops ``point to an important hypothesis that combat duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, due to the high intensity and persistent level of threat, acts as a great equalizer of risk, resulting in similar rates of PTSD and depression for men and women.''
Research has not addressed how women react in high combat situations because they still serve largely in support roles, away from the fighting.
In the general population, studies have shown that women are twice as likely as men to meet the diagnostic criteria for PTSD. But some of that gap may be due to differences in the kinds of traumas that men and women suffer, as well as higher rates of disclosure by women.
Differences in how the sexes react to combat remain largely unknown, mainly because women were shielded from combat in past wars.
A national study of Vietnam veterans found that women who served in that war, most of them as nurses, had lower rates of PTSD than men -- 8.5 percent, compared to 15.2 percent. Among those who had a relatively high exposure to combat, 17.5 percent of women met the criteria for PTSD, compared to about 36 percent of men.
A study of veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf War produced different results, with twice as many female soldiers as males meeting the diagnostic criteria for PTSD two years after their deployments.
But Street and other experts say neither of those wars is comparable to Iraq, where women and men are both serving prolonged deployments in high-danger settings.
Experts are hoping that the war in Iraq will break new ground in research on gender.
The conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq mark the largest wartime deployments ever of women -- more than 160,000 so far.
"Without the research, people can guess, they can speculate about women not having the emotional endurance'' to serve in combat, said retired Navy Capt. Lory Manning, who heads the Women in the Military Project at the nonprofit Women's Research & Education Institute. "The lack of evidence allows them to make all kinds of assumptions. We need the empirical research to stop the speculation.''
May 17, 2007
Pg. 1
Women in combat cope as well as men, military finds
By Lisa Chedekel, Courant Staff Writer
Female soldiers in Iraq are holding up under the stress of combat at rates similar to men, a new Pentagon study shows, dispelling predictions that gender would play a significant role in the incidence of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder among troops.
"We found no evidence that female soldiers are less able than male soldiers to cope with the stressors and challenges of serving in combat,'' a team of military mental-health experts concluded in a new report based on extensive surveys of troops in Iraq. "When discussing the role of the female soldier in combat, the focus needs to move away from one of weakness and vulnerability, to one of strength and accomplishment.''
The report by the military's Mental Health Advisory Team found that women experienced higher rates of depression, anxiety and PTSD when serving in "low-combat'' settings. But those differences dissipated in situations where both sexes were exposed to moderate or ``medium'' levels of combat. Overall, about 19 percent of both female and male soldiers surveyed screened positive for PTSD symptoms, and 8 percent screened positive for depression.
"Female soldiers are no more vulnerable than male soldiers in how combat can affect their mental health and well-being,'' the team reported.
Past research shows that women in the general population are more likely to suffer from PTSD than men, but the new study indicates that the gender gap shrinks when men and women serve together in high-risk settings. Veterans' advocates and some mental-health experts aren't surprised, saying there is no inherent reason women would be less resilient than men in coping with war-zone stresses.
"In this war, women are really there on the line with men. They're part of the same units, living by the same professional codes, going through the same hell,'' said Linda Schwartz, the state's commissioner of veterans affairs, who was an Air Force nurse during the Vietnam War. "With the intensity of this situation and the [repeat deployments], the women over there have had to pull their own weight and prove themselves,'' while those unable to cope with the stresses of combat may have left the military.
One of the reasons women in Iraq were expected to have higher rates of depression and PTSD is that they are more likely to have experienced sexual assault and harassment, which remain pervasive problems in the military.
Experts say those stresses may help explain why women in "low combat'' settings have higher rates of mental health problems.
But when both sexes serve in higher-risk combat settings, those other stresses appear to become less significant.
"In the medium combat setting, the stressor [of imminent danger] becomes intense enough that those gender differences are erased,'' said Amy Street, a clinical psychologist in the women's health sciences division of the National Center for PTSD in Boston.
Military researchers reached a similar conclusion in a study of women in combat published earlier this year in the International Journal of Epidemiology.
That study found that mental-health data from troops ``point to an important hypothesis that combat duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, due to the high intensity and persistent level of threat, acts as a great equalizer of risk, resulting in similar rates of PTSD and depression for men and women.''
Research has not addressed how women react in high combat situations because they still serve largely in support roles, away from the fighting.
In the general population, studies have shown that women are twice as likely as men to meet the diagnostic criteria for PTSD. But some of that gap may be due to differences in the kinds of traumas that men and women suffer, as well as higher rates of disclosure by women.
Differences in how the sexes react to combat remain largely unknown, mainly because women were shielded from combat in past wars.
A national study of Vietnam veterans found that women who served in that war, most of them as nurses, had lower rates of PTSD than men -- 8.5 percent, compared to 15.2 percent. Among those who had a relatively high exposure to combat, 17.5 percent of women met the criteria for PTSD, compared to about 36 percent of men.
A study of veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf War produced different results, with twice as many female soldiers as males meeting the diagnostic criteria for PTSD two years after their deployments.
But Street and other experts say neither of those wars is comparable to Iraq, where women and men are both serving prolonged deployments in high-danger settings.
Experts are hoping that the war in Iraq will break new ground in research on gender.
The conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq mark the largest wartime deployments ever of women -- more than 160,000 so far.
"Without the research, people can guess, they can speculate about women not having the emotional endurance'' to serve in combat, said retired Navy Capt. Lory Manning, who heads the Women in the Military Project at the nonprofit Women's Research & Education Institute. "The lack of evidence allows them to make all kinds of assumptions. We need the empirical research to stop the speculation.''