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Mental health
Published in Ian Greaves, Military Medicine in Iraq and Afghanistan, 2018
Battlemind is a comprehensive training package developed for use in the US Army.117,118 The intervention can be delivered at various stages of the deployment cycle, including the post-deployment period. The content of post-deployment Battlemind is similar to the standard mental health briefing delivered to UK personnel when they finish deployment; however, they differ in some important respects. Both interventions make use of a group delivery format; however, in contrast to UK stress briefing, Battlemind is designed to be interactive rather than didactic, and participants are encouraged to share their experiences with other training group members. The training uses an acronym where each letter of ‘Battlemind’ represents a unique set of skills, which are abilities, behaviours or states of mind that personnel relied upon during deployment. Battlemind training demonstrates the way in which personnel can successfully transition each of the deployment skills to the home environment. For example, the second T in Battlemind stands for ‘tactical awareness’, which is very useful in the deployment setting, however, it can come to represent hypervigilance when at home, a cardinal feature of PTSD. Through interaction with Battlemind participants, trainers use the varied experiences in the audience and their own suggestions to illustrate ways in which each of the 10 deployment skills can be transitioned to the home setting.
Mental Health Training Following Combat: A Randomized Controlled Trial Comparing Group Size
Published in Military Behavioral Health, 2019
Jeffrey L. Thomas, Paul D. Bliese, Carl Andrew Castro, Dave I. Cotting, Anthony Cox, Amy B. Adler
In the initial Battlemind study (Adler et al., 2009), platoons randomly assigned to receive Battlemind reported fewer mental health symptoms at follow-up than those receiving standard stress education. There were no significant differences between delivery of Battlemind in small, platoon-sized groups of about 30 soldiers and large, company-sized groups of about 100 soldiers. In comparison to the control condition (i.e., stress education), small Battlemind led to fewer posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, but only for those with high combat exposure. Notably, large Battlemind led to similar reductions in PTSD symptoms, and fewer depression symptoms. In a separate analyses, postintervention ratings of training satisfaction differed by condition. Although both Battlemind groups rated their training highly, the small Battlemind group rated the training more highly on multiple dimensions than the large Battlemind group (e.g., an atmosphere of mutual trust, realizing what to do to reintegrate, normalizing reactions). Thus, it was difficult to determine whether small or large training group size conferred an advantage.