Methodologies for Assisting Veterans with Post-traumatic Stress Syndrome in NATO Countries
Methodologies for Assisting Veterans with Post-traumatic Stress Syndrome in NATO Countries

Summary/Abstract: In Romania, there are officially only 19 soldiers diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to an official statement from 2018. PTSD affects between 5% and 18% of the personnel who participated in the same NATO missions as the Romanian military. Starting from an official estimate according to which over 55,000 soldiers participated in foreign missions after 1990, PTSD could affect between 2750 and 9900 of the total Romanian participants This severe underdiagnosis of PTSD had as its main cause the lack of a specific regulatory framework for the protection of veterans in theaters of operations, which would define this condition and recognize it as a source of mental disabilities in veterans in theaters of operations. With the appearance of law 168/2020 and the application rules (in the Ministry of National Defense in February 2021 and in the Ministry of Interior in March 2021) opens the way to real diagnosis of PTSD cases and protection of veterans' rights, provided there is an adequate institutional framework. This paper presents how NATO armies have organized the assistance of veterans with PTSD, with focus on clinical psychology interventions.

• Details
• Contents