Even after declining to normal, PTSD levels can go up suddenly five years after a soldier leaves the battlefield, shows a surprising new study.

According to Reuters, the study underlines the need to screen soldiers for PTSD years after they have returned from a deployment. The study indicates that PTSD can lie dormant for a while before suddenly re-emerging.

The study, aimed at analyzing changes in PTSD complaints in long-term after deployment, was based on research of 1,007 Dutch soldiers who had been deployed to Afghanistan between 2005 and 2008.

The researchers discovered that PTSD levels spiked six months after returning home but returned to pre-deployment levels after about a year. It was more shocking that five years after deployment the soldiers showed a massive spike in PTSD levels.

This was the first study to evaluate the effects of PTSD in the short term. Data suggests that the problem affects up to 20 per cent of Iraq war veterans.

The study was aimed evaluating “the timing of an increase in treatment demand after deployment,” says Iris Eekhout of VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam, the lead author on the study.

Brown University School of Public Health had recently warned that there is a lack of resource for non-veterans suffering from PTSD. “For the other people affected by PTSD — victims of sexual assault, child abuse and natural disasters — there really isn’t an organized body of research that generates guidance for how they and their caregivers should deal with their PTSD,” says Judith Bentkover of the University.

The complete details of the study have been published in the Harvard Review of Psychiatry.

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