Preinjury psychiatric status, injury severity, and postdeployment posttraumatic stress disorder.

Context: Physical injury has been associated with the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Previous studies have retrospectively examined the relationship of preinjury psychiatric status and postinjury PTSD with conflicting results, but no prospective studies regarding this subject have been conducted, to our knowledge.

Objective: To prospectively assess the relationship of predeployment psychiatric status and injury severity with postdeployment PTSD.