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Roberto J. Rona, FFPH; Kenneth C. Hyams, MD; Simon Wessely, MD

JAMA. 2005;293:1257-1260.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Ongoing events in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to renewed calls to implement widespread screening of members of armed forces to identify those at risk of future psychiatric injury before deployment and to identify those with psychological problems on their return home.^1-2 If the military could predict who will develop psychological illness due to combat stress, military personnel and commanders would benefit during conflict, and veterans would have fewer mental health problems following a war.

The current calls for widespread screening are not new. Psychological screening based on psychiatric interview was put into practice on a massive scale by the United States during World War II, but was a major failure.³ By the time General George C. Marshall stopped the program in 1944, 2 million men had been rejected as psychologically vulnerable, and thus unable to serve their country.⁴ . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Identified Conditions Should Be Important Health Problems

Author Affiliations: Department of Public Health Sciences, King’s College, London, United Kingdom (Dr Rona); Office of Occupational and Environmental Health, Department of Veterans Affairs, Washington, DC (Dr Hyams); and King’s Centre for Military Health Research, Institute of Psychiatry, London, United Kingdom (Dr Wessely).

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Screening for Psychological Illness in the Military
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Screening for Psychological Illness in the Military—Reply
Simon Wessely, Kenneth C. Hyams, and Roberto J. Rona
JAMA. 2005;294(1):43.
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