Soldiers' personal technologies on deployment and at home.

OBJECTIVE: Personal technologies such as smartphones, computers, and gaming devices, are ubiquitous in the civilian world. Consequently they represent ideal vehicles for disseminating psychological and other health resources and interventions. However, almost nothing is known about personal technology use in the U.S. military. We conducted the most comprehensive survey to date of the use, availability, and need for personal technologies by U.S. military service members. Our survey asked detailed questions about computers and the Internet, phones and smartphones, other mobile or portable technologies, gaming devices, and TV and video media used during deployment and at permanent duty station or home. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We collected data by paper-and-pencil survey in 2010 and 2011 from 331 active Army service members at a processing and registration center in a large military installation in the western United States. Two cohorts were surveyed: Soldiers who had previously been deployed to a warzone and soldiers who had never been deployed. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: We measured high rates of personal technology use by service members at home across all popular electronic media. Soldiers at home essentially resembled civilian consumers in their use of popular technologies. Some technologies, including the Internet, gaming, and TV, were widespread on deployment. Others, most notably cellphones, were more restricted by availability, connectivity, opportunity, and military regulation in the warzone. Results will enable researchers and technology developers target their efforts on the most promising and popular technologies for psychological health in the military.

Development and initial testing of a measure of public and self-stigma in the military.

OBJECTIVE: This research developed and tested the Military Stigma Scale (MSS), a 26-item scale, designed to measure public and self-stigma, two theorized core components of mental health stigma. METHOD: The sample comprised 1,038 active duty soldiers recruited from a large Army installation. Soldiers' mean age was 26.7 (standard deviation = 5.9) years, and 93.6% were male. The sample was randomly split into a scale development group (n = 520) and a confirmatory group (n = 518). RESULTS: Factor analysis conducted with the scale development group resulted in the adoption of two factors, named public and self-stigma, accounting for 52.1% of the variance. Confirmatory factor analysis conducted with the confirmatory group indicated good fit for the two-factor model. Both factors were components of a higher order stigma factor. The public and self-stigma scales for the exploratory and confirmatory groups demonstrated good internal consistency (α = .94 and .89; α = .95 and .87, respectively). Demographic differences in stigma were consistent with theory and previous empirical research: Soldiers who had seen a mental health provider scored lower in self-stigma than those who had not. CONCLUSIONS: The MSS comprises two internally consistent dimensions that appear to capture the constructs of public and self-stigma. The overall results indicate that public and self-stigma are dimensions of stigma that are relevant to active duty soldiers and suggest the need to assess these dimensions in future military stigma research.

Suicide Risk Among Wounded U.S. Service Members.

The association between suicide and combat injuries sustained during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was examined. A retrospective population-based cohort design was conducted using official military records to identify combat injuries (October 7, 2001, to December 31, 2007). Those who were injured during combat had higher crude suicide rates than those who deployed and were not injured (incidence rate ratio [IRR] = 1.50; confidence interval [CI] = 1.06, 2.12), or never deployed (IRR = 1.46; CI = 1.04, 2.06). After adjusting for demographics, these findings were no longer statistically significant. Although our data did not support an elevated suicide risk among wounded service members, additional research is needed to examine the impact of injury severity.

Evaluation of a methodology to validate National Death Index retrieval results among a cohort of U.S. service members.

PURPOSE: Accurate knowledge of the vital status of individuals is critical to the validity of mortality research. National Death Index (NDI) and NDI-Plus are comprehensive epidemiological resources for mortality ascertainment and cause of death data that require additional user validation. Currently, there is a gap in methods to guide validation of NDI search results rendered for active duty service members. The purpose of this research was to adapt and evaluate the CDC National Program of Cancer Registries (NPCR) algorithm for mortality ascertainment in a large military cohort. METHODS: We adapted and applied the NPCR algorithm to a cohort of 7088 service members on active duty at the time of death at some point between 2001 and 2009. We evaluated NDI validity and NDI-Plus diagnostic agreement against the Department of Defense's Armed Forces Medical Examiner System (AFMES). RESULTS: The overall sensitivity of the NDI to AFMES records after the application of the NPCR algorithm was 97.1%. Diagnostic estimates of measurement agreement between the NDI-Plus and the AFMES cause of death groups were high. CONCLUSIONS: The NDI and NDI-Plus can be successfully used with the NPCR algorithm to identify mortality and cause of death among active duty military cohort members who die in the United States.

Virtual reality exposure therapy for the treatment of anxiety disorders: an evaluation of research quality.

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) support the effectiveness of virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) for anxiety disorders; however, the overall quality of the VRET RCT literature base has yet to be evaluated. This study reviewed 27 VRET RCTs and the degree of adherence to 8 RCT research design criteria derived from existing standards. Adherence to the study quality criteria was generally low as the articles met an average 2.85 criteria (SD=1.56). None of the studies met more than six quality criteria. Study quality did not predict effect size; however, a reduction in effect size magnitude was observed for studies with larger sample sizes when comparing VRET to non-active control groups. VRET may be an effective method of treatment but caution should be exercised in interpreting the existing body of literature supporting VRET relative to existing standards of care. The need for well-designed VRET research is discussed.