health.mil

Emily Greene  |  Health.mil

November 16, 2010

Every day service members face stressors which often result in physical or psychological injury. The Military Health System is dedicated to the best care for individuals in need. The Military Operational Medicine Research Program plays an important role in this battle for the well-being of service members.  

Army Maj. Gen. James K. Gilman, commanding general of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, said that in addition to the many types of stressors there are exacerbating factors both during and after combat deployments.

“Much of that has to do with psychological stress, such as post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury, but there are other issues like sleep, nutrition and environment stress which affect our troops as well. Our goal at MOMRP is to remove some of those medical and psychological barriers,” Gilman said.

Army Spc. Ryan Bradley, a soldier serving on Camp Taji, Iraq, with the Enhanced Combat Aviation Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, applies a tourniquet during a simulated casualty exercise, Nov. 7.  (Photo Credit: Army Spc. Roland Hale, eCAB, 1st Inf. Div. PAO) Some of the technology that the MOMRP uses measures physiological response to stress. This can help experts predict outcomes in time to provide treatment. In addition, there is ongoing research to develop coping methods to address the often invisible wounds of war.

“Our biggest focus right now is on traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress. These issues impact a lot of people and our senior leaders are very concerned for the individuals who are suffering from these injuries. Both TBI and post-traumatic stress also directly affect other issues like suicide, substance abuse and family violence to name a few. It is of the utmost importance that we find ways to help heal our service members suffering from these conditions, and fast,” Gilman said.

Two ways in which MOMRP research and development is yielding solutions to mitigate the effects of TBI and post-traumatic stress are through “battlemind training” and a new registry.

“The Joint Theatre Trauma Registry is helping us to reach all of the medical facilities which are dealing with trauma patients, as close to real time as possible,” Gilman said. “Having current and accurate information about these patients readily available to us through the registry helps us to analyze the information in very short order. This is a big component in developing ways to help people.”

Army Lt. Col. Carl Castro, director of military operations in the medical research program recently spoke about battlemind training, also known as resiliency training, at a national conference on combat stress. The intent is to give service members practical skills to prepare them mentally for combat stress and its effects. The program builds specific mental health skills geared for each phase of the service member’s career and deployment cycle.

"Mental health training [for soldiers] works," Castro said. "This is where I think mental health workers can do the most in advance."

Three months after their return from deployment, soldiers who had received battlemind training reported fewer symptoms of PTSD and fewer sleep problems than those who received standard stress education, said Castro, who conducted the research with a team at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Gilman said research and developments in these key areas of concern are ongoing and constantly evolving.

“Some things we are looking at for the future are better ways of understanding the phenomenon of blast injury. We need better ways to assess service members who are exposed to a blast and better ways to treat and rehabilitate them,” Gilman said. “We are also looking at better ways to treat both TBI and PTSD which are not medicine-based.” 

As the MOMRP website says, in a welcoming statement, “The soldier standing his watch, the pilot securing her helmet, or the commander directing his troops in the field are all affected by research that the MOMRP provides. The resulting products of this biomedical research transition to Army planners, doctrine and materiel developers and the Army medical community.”

Health Care [News]  |  mental health   MOMRP   stress   training