Melvin Blanchard Quotes (5 Quotes)

The military is trying to take better care of the soldiers' mental health in the field and that may have some bearing on the outcome, but I still expect to see CMI in those soldiers who are in Iraq now when they return.

Physicians need to be aware of the potential manifestations of CMI and the need to treat them, and metabolic syndrome is a key example. There's quite a bit of literature on this condition, and there are steps physicians can encourage their patients to take such as increased exercise, stress management and dieting to reduce abdominal fat that can lessen its effects.

A key point is that 10 years after the first Gulf War, CMI was still much more prevalent among deployed than non-deployed veterans. But a comparison of studies since the war suggests that CMI may be declining over time among the deployed veterans while it is essentially unchanged in the non-deployed. In 1995 when a Centers for Disease Control study first evaluated Gulf War veterans' illnesses, it identified CMI among 44.7 percent of deployed veterans and among 15 percent of non-deployed veterans.

We're still not sure whether CMI is due to a single disease or pathological process. But this study has identified an intriguing association between CMI risk and diagnosis of depression and anxiety disorders prior to military service.

History of psychiatric conditions prior to service appears to place veterans at a significantly increased risk of CMI. This should not be taken as an indication that CMI is all in the veteran's head the condition has physical manifestations that are very real, including objectively defined conditions such as metabolic syndrome.