Effect of Serious Mental Health and Physical Injuries and Their Treatment on Career Trajectories for Military Service Members

Introduction Research suggests injury/disability type and individual demographic factors both impact return-to-work trajectories of those with injuries/disabilities. These questions of disability and return to work/service are particularly relevant to the military where service members are at increased risk of experiencing work-related physical and mental health injuries. The Army Warrior Care and Transition Program (WCTP) is a comprehensive rehabilitation program launched in 2007 to address injured service members' needs. We sought to understand the WCTP's efficacy in returning soldiers with physical and mental health injuries to military service (including active duty, Reserve, and Guard). Materials and Methods This retrospective cohort study utilized the WCTP tracking database (Medical Operations Data System-Warrior Transition, MODS-WT) to explore outcomes for soldiers who participated in the program 2005-2018. The type of injury at program entry was categorized as being a purely physical injury, a purely mental health injury, or both a physical and mental health injury, the impact of injury type on return to military service was explored. Chi-squared and Wilcoxon rank-sum test compared covariates of length of time in the program, sex, age, and marital status by group. Adjusted Logistic regression analysis calculated odds of returning to service, and Joinpoint analysis identified trends in data. Results A total of 83,274 soldiers who went through and completed the program 86,529 times 2005-2013 were included. A total of 54,032 program entries were for physical injuries, 7,898 entries for mental health injuries, and 24,599 entries were for both physical and mental health injuries. Odds of returning to military service were increased with officer and warrant officer rank (vs. enlisted), and decreased with age, female sex, and total months in the program. After adjustment for these factors, odds of returning to military service were 68% decreased for those with mental health injuries (OR 0.32 [95% CI 0.31-0.24]) and 72% decreased for those with physical and mental health injuries (OR 0.28 [95% CI 0.27-0.29]) as compared to those with purely physical injuries. For those with physical injuries, odds of returning to military service decreased 15% with every 3 months in the program. For those with purely mental health injuries, odds of returning to military service decreased dramatically the first 6 months, the decline was gradual from 6 to 18 months in the program, from 18 to 36 months in the program the rate of return to military service remained statistically consistent with a slight upward trend. For those with mental health and physical injuries, odds of return to military service declined by 40% over the first 6 months and by 12.5% thereafter Conclusions Mental health injuries and time in the Warrior Care program were associated with decreased likelihood of return to military service. Longer periods of care for those with mental health issues may relate to less standardized, tested, or known efficacious mental health treatments. The study is limited by inclusion of only those with serious injury, and an inability to assess injury severity, but strengthened by equal access to high-quality care and a large population of injured service members.