Iraq War Clinician Guide 108 Appendix D Appendix D. Assessment of Iraq War Veterans: Selecting Assessment Instruments and Interpreting Results

Abstract

The Assessment section of this Guide discussed general challenges to assessment of veterans returning from Iraq and delineated suggested domains to assess and issues to consider in assessing those domains. This section will focus on suggested instruments to use as part of an assessment to decide what services to offer veterans and to plan psychological treatment. As indicated in the previous section, responses in the days and weeks following exposure to highly stressful events are highly variable across individuals and high levels of distress in the days and weeks following exposure do not reliably predict longer-term posttraumatic symptoms. Some, but not all, who meet criteria for Acute Stress Disorder two weeks after and event will later have PTSD, but some who do not meet criteria for ASD will also develop PTSD (Bryant & Harvey, 2002). Since no measures of early responses have been found to reliably predict longer-term responses and since most of those exposed to extreme stressors recover within a month, assessment with measures of specific domains is not recommended during this period. This section will make suggestions, therefore, about selecting measures to assess veterans who have been home one month or more. Many of the domains discussed in the previous section can be adequately assessed during a