The number of women in the military has doubled in the past decade. According to the Pentagon, about 10 percent of the 2.2 million troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan have been women.
These women are more likely to be in the line of fire than those serving in previous wars -- and that means they're also at a higher risk of having depression, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and other mental health problems. Researchers at the University of California San Francisco and the San Francisco VA Medical Center (SFVAMC) wanted to see if gender played a role in mental health outcomes after soldiers were exposed to combat-related trauma. In a recent study, researchers looked at 7,251 veteran responses to different kinds of combat exposure: witnessing killing, sexual trauma, killing in war, and injury. They found that PTSD rates are the same among male and female vets of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, with about 18 percent of both groups screening positive for the disorder.
While both male and female vets had equal chances of having PTSD after exposure to killing, sexual trauma, or witnessing killing, women vets who were injured were more likely to have PTSD than men.
The study also found that while female veterans were more likely to suffer from depression, their male counterparts were more likely to abuse alcohol.
Lead author Shira Maguen, a psychologist at SFVAMC and an assistant professor of psychiatry at UCSF, said the study suggests that doctors should get a detailed assessment of specific traumatic combat experiences because "not all types of combat may be equally experienced by men and women after they return from deployment."