Considerations and future directions for research
Research and conclusions included in the current review must take the limitations of the larger literature into consideration. First, veterans are not a uniform group and can be differentiated by their combat experience, the branch in which they served (i.e. Army, Navy, Marine Corp., Air Force, and Coast Guard), the era in which they served, age, access to social networks, connectivity to resources, as well as a host of individual differences in personality, affect, cognitive resources, and distal personal experiences. Researchers have yet to establish complete and accurate psychiatric data on those most recently deployed. OEF/OIF data are still being collected and analyzed while relatively nothing is known about the cohort of soldiers participating in current conflicts under Operation New Dawn. Recent service has been defined by uniquely longer and more frequent deployments tasked with missions that rely more heavily upon counter-insurgency tactics than previous eras. Initial evidence suggests higher rates of mental illness among veterans of recent wars, possibly contributed to by an unprecedentedly high 90 percent survival rate following serious combat-related injury (Holcomb et al., 2006). Mixed evidence across surviving cohorts, however, suggests that rates of dual diagnoses may be lower among more recent veterans of OEF/OIF than among veterans who served during Vietnam and the subsequent era (Petrakis et al., 2011a). We have attempted to provide descriptions of sample size and targeted era of service, when possible, to aid in interpretation of the generalizability of available findings.