Study Says War Altered Iraq Veterans’ Reflexes

Two months after returning from Iraq, some U.S. Army soldiers displayed subtle signs of confusion, reduced attention span and impaired memory that suggest a slow readjustment to civilian life, according to a study published today.

The study also found an increase in reaction speed and a heightened level of tension among the soldiers, said the study’s lead author Jennifer J. Vasterling, a psychologist with the Southeast Louisiana Veterans Health Care System.

The findings, published in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., are consistent with “an adaptive response to a life-threatening situation,” she said.

The psychological changes most likely were a result of the soldiers’ constant hyper-vigilance in Iraq -- a trait that is helpful in battle but counterproductive in civilian life.

“The brain can put only so much cognitive effort in a given direction,” Vasterling said.

Elaine R. Peskind, a psychologist at the University of Washington in Seattle who was not involved in the study, agreed that the soldiers’ hyper-vigilance was “a distracter” that impaired their ability to focus on mundane tasks of memory and reasoning.

Overall, however, she characterized the soldiers’ psychological changes as “mild.”

The study, the first to examine psychological characteristics of soldiers before and after deployment to the Middle East, found no significant incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

Other studies had shown earlier that as many as one in eight soldiers on duty in Iraq was formally diagnosed with PTSD within a year after return and that as many as a third of them had sought psychiatric help.

But a study reported in March by Dr. Charles W. Hoge and his colleagues at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research found that 90% of those with the stress disorder showed no symptoms in the first months immediately after their return.

Vasterling’s group studied 654 soldiers, comparing them with a control group of 307 soldiers who were not deployed.

The study found that about three out of 10 returning veterans reported some mental confusion, compared with two out of 10 before deployment. Similarly, three out of 10 had small problems with verbal learning skills, memory and attention management. About one in four soldiers reported some depression.

Vasterling thinks most symptoms will disappear over time and plans to reevaluate the soldiers a year after their return.

“The body has learned how to respond to a life threat over an extended period of time,” she said. “It’s doubtful that it can be turned off like a light switch.”

But if the symptoms persist, “and you still have it when you are trying to get back into the workforce or trying to fit back into home life, that can be a big problem,” said Murray Raskind, another psychologist at the University of Washington in Seattle who was not involved in the study.

“If the average person who hasn’t been to war has these kinds of difficulties, it sets off huge alarm bells in the medical community,” he said.