By Maggie Fox, Reuters
news.aol.com
WASHINGTON (Oct. 28) - Nearly 15 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans seeking medical care from the U.S. Veterans Affairs Department have suffered sexual trauma , from harassment to rape, researchers reported on Tuesday. And these veterans were 1.5 times as likely as other veterans to need mental health services, the report from the VA found.
"We are, in fact, detecting men and women who seem to have a significant need for mental health services," said Rachel Kimerling of the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System in California.
The study, presented at a meeting of the American Public Health Association in San Diego, raises many questions.
Kimerling said in a telephone interview the term "military sexual trauma " covers a range of events from coerced sex to outright rape or threatening and unwelcome sexual advances.
Kimerling said for her purposes it is not necessary to find out what kind of sexual trauma occurred. Her study also did not determine when it happened.
"If you think about military service where you are living and working so closely with the same people, that even if it is not sexual assault ... it is possible that severe sexual harassment is just as traumatic," she said. ...
Most veterans who were affected were women, with more than one in seven women seeking health care services of some sort also reporting sexual trauma . Just under 1 percent of male veterans also reported military sexual trauma .
http://news.aol.com/health/article/sexual-trauma-afflicts-us-veterans/227949
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1 comment:
Greetings,
Thank you for your informative articles. Indeed, one wonders what the trauma level is, and what the numbers are, of citizens in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other war torn nations, at the preyful hands of the US military.
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