Troop Depression on Rise in Afghanistan

U.S. troop morale improved in Iraq last year, but soldiers fighting in Afghanistan suffered more depression as violence there worsened, according to an Army mental health report.

And in a recurring theme for a force strained by its seventh year at war, the annual battlefield study released Thursday found once again that soldiers on their third and fourth tours of duty had sharply greater rates of mental health problems than those on their first or second deployments.

The repositioning of troops closer to the Iraqi population last year, part of counterinsurgency tactics, made it harder for soldiers to get mental health treatment, the study found.

The report recommended longer home time between deployments, more focused suicide-prevention training and sending civilian psychologists and other mental health professionals to the warfront to add to the uniformed corps there. Officials said they've had some civilian volunteers.

The report was drawn from the work of a team of mental health experts who traveled to the wars last fall and surveyed more than 2,200 soldiers in Iraq and nearly 900 in Afghanistan. In the fifth such effort, the team also gathered information from more than 400 medical professionals, chaplains, psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health workers serving with the troops — coming away with statistics on a range of issues such as marital problems, mental illness and troop ethics.

"They do show the effects of a long war," Col. Elspeth Ritchie, psychiatry consultant to Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, said of the data.

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A Plan for Better Troop Mental Care

The Department of Defense has released a plan to improve mental-health care for American troops who are facing multiple tours in war zones.

The report lays out a "road map for change" in an effort to "put psychological health and fitness on an equal footing with physical health and fitness." The recommendations address findings from a report released earlier this year that found that troops going to war face increasing levels of anxiety and depression with each successive deployment, with shorter "dwell times," or times at home with their families.

READ MORE @ US NEWS & WORLD REPORT