Psychosis in the British Army: a 2-year follow-up study.

Background: Recent research into mental illness in military populations has tended to focus on minor mental illness and the consequences of trauma. The literature contains very little on serious mental illness, including its occupational implications.

Aims: To identify the incidence and factors associated with nonaffective psychosis in British Army personnel, to evaluate service quality in terms of duration of untreated psychosis, and to identify predictors of occupational outcome after 2 years, to inform future management of similar cases.

Acute military psychiatric casualties from the war in Iraq.

Background: The view that most military personnel evacuated from war zones are suffering from combat stress reactions, or are otherwise traumatised by the horrors of war, has an impact on all aspects of military psychiatry.

Aims: To delineate the reasons for psychiatric aeromedical evacuation from Iraq from the start of build-up of UK forces in January 2003 until the end of October that year, 6 months after the end of formal hostilities.

Method: A retrospective study was conducted of field and in-patient psychiatric assessments of 116 military personnel evacuated to the UK military psychiatric in-patient facility in Catterick Garrison.