Post traumatic stress disorder is given as psychological reaction which take place after one has gone through a stressful event .the characteristics of PTSD are anxiety, depression, recurrent nightmares, flashbacks and avoiding things that are a reminder of the event. There have been increased reports of mental health problems among soldiers who have been deployed in war zones like Afghanistan and Iraq. The paper will look at two articles that highlight the issue of mental health problems like PTSD among soldiers who are deployed to war zones. This will include an annotated bibliography of the two articles. Posttraumatic stress disorder and government initiatives to relieve

The article gives an insight of what happens to the men and women who go fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. Most of these men and women end up dead but there are thousands who come back with physical injuries that leave permanent scars in their lives.it points out the increase in the mental health crisis among the soldiers that are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan which is termed as life altering and damaging to troops and veterans. The diagnoses of mental health problems mentioned are depression, abuse of substances and post traumatic stress disorder. Many men and women who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq also have a big potential of suffering from mental health problems. The wars in these zones have become so personal such that almost three quarters of the soldiers have reported that they at one point they have been in situations where they could be killed or severely injured. These reports are at a very high rate such that they knew someone who had died or was injured or a member of their team had been a casualty (Shea-porter, 2009).

A relationship between stressors of service and mental health problems is also shown. For instance a linear relationship between the level of combat and a positive screen for anxiety, acute stress, depression and other mental health problems is indicated.in a report for both depression and anxiety the likelihood of soldiers screening positive is 2.4 to 2.6 times if they are experiencing high combat as opposed to those experiencing low combat. Multiple deployments are what increase the incidences of mental health problems...

This is through programs that help address psychological health.
Assessment & Critique

The information from the article can be trusted since there are real examples give like the soldier who shot his comrades. From this we can see that the issue of post traumatic stress disorder is real and thus has to be dealt with. There are also real examples of ongoing initiatives to try and deal with psychological problems faced by soldiers. The author has demonstrated a high critical thinking standard by the way he is expressing the issue in the article. However, there has been a failure in some aspect of critical thinking whereby there is no indication whatsoever of whether the programs have been successful. There is no information of whether or not there has been a reduction in the number of incidences pertaining to mental health problems among those who have gone through the programs.

Reflection

The article is very useful as it brings out a real problem that is occurring today. This article is very useful in my study as I can use it to give advice to soldiers who might be going through PTSD hence find a way of overcoming this. The information in the article is in line with information from other scholarly articles as they both show an increase in cases of PTSD among soldiers deployed in war zones.

Deployment stressors and posttraumatic stress symptomatology

Summary

The article compares active duty and national guard/reserve personnel when it comes to deployment stressors and post traumatic stress symptomatology. The article highlights on the increase of deployment of National Guard and Reserve in the war zones over the last few decades. The number of soldiers deployed from NG/R has gone up by 40%.the NG/R personal are older, in comparison with active duty personnel. Some main differences between the active duty personnel and NG/R personnel are pointed out. These include training that the NG/R receive is…