Dr. Mitchell is the VISN 22 Specialty Care Medicine Lead and former medical director of the Phoenix VAMC Postdeployment Clinic in Arizona.
Author disclosures The author reports no actual or potential conflicts of interest with regard to this article.
Disclaimer The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Federal Practitioner, Frontline Medical Communications Inc., the U.S. Government, or any of its agencies.
Health care providers are in the unique position to promote a healthy postdeployment transition by assisting veterans to recognize nonpathologic transition symptoms, select appropriate coping strategies, and seek further assistance for more complex problems.
The rigid dichotomy between combat deployment and postdeployment environments necessitates a multitude of cognitive, behavioral, and emotional adjustments for National Guard members and reservists to resume postdeployment civilian lifestyles successfully. Reacclimating to the postdeployment world is not a quick process for these veterans because of the time required to adjust from a deeply ingrained military combat mentality to civilian life. The process of this reintegration into the civilian world is known as postdeployment transition.
More than half of post-9/11 combat veterans report at least some difficulty with postdeployment transition. 1,2 Frequently encountered symptoms of this period include impaired sleep, low frustration tolerance, decreased attention, poor concentration, short-term memory deficits, and difficulty with emotional regulation. 1,3,4 Veterans will have difficulty reintegrating into the family unit and society without successful coping strategies to address these symptoms. If transition symptoms are prolonged, veterans are at risk for developing chronic adjustment difficulty or mental health issues.
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Although there is significant attention paid to postdeployment adjustment by military family advocacy groups, there is little information in the medical literature on what constitutes common, nonpathologic postdeployment reactions among combat veterans. Frequently, when postdeployment transition symptoms are discussed, the medical literature tends to explain these in the context of a mental health disorder, such posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or a cognitive injury, such as traumatic brain injury. 5-8 Without a balanced understanding of normal postdeployment transitions, a health care provider (HCP) inappropriately may equate transition symptoms with the presence of mental health disorders or cognitive injury and medicalize the coping strategies needed to promote healthy adjustment.
The purpose of this article is to promote HCP awareness of common, nonpathologic postdeployment transition symptoms in combat veterans who are National Guard members or reservists. Such knowledge will enable HCPs to evaluate transition symptoms among these combat veterans reentering the civilian world, normalize common transition reactions, and recognize when further intervention is needed. This article reflects the author’s experience as a medical director working in a VA postdeployment clinic combined with data available in the medical literature and lay press.
Postdeployment Transition Symptoms
Dysregulation of emotional expression in returning combat veterans potentially can be present throughout the postdeployment period of adjustment. Although individual experiences vary widely in intensity and frequency, during postdeployment transition veterans often note difficulty in adjusting emotional expression to match that of nonmilitary counterparts. 1,9-11 These difficulties usually fall into 2 broad categories: (1) relative emotional neutrality to major life events that cause nonmilitary civilians great joy or sadness; and (2) overreaction to trivial events, causing significant irritation, anger, or sadness that normally would not produce such emotional reactions in nonmilitary civilians. The former is largely overlooked in medical literature to date except in relation to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders , 5th Edition (DSM-5) categories, and the latter is often described in limited terms as increased irritability, restlessness, and low frustration tolerance. This emotional dysregulation creates confusing paradoxes for veterans. For example, a veteran might feel no strong emotion when notified of the death of a close relative and yet cry uncontrollably while watching a sad scene in a fictional movie.
