BACKGROUND The aim was to study the effect of brief counselling and psychological debriefing following a trauma on subsequent morbidity. METHOD We investigated psychological morbidity in 62 British soldiers whose duties included the handling and identification of dead bodies of allied and enemy soldiers during the Gulf War. Of these soldiers, 69% received a psychological debriefing on complet...

The authors conducted factor analysis on survey data from 1,779 Persian Gulf War veterans. Their purposes were to: 1) determine whether factor analysis identified a unique "Gulf War syndrome" among veterans potentially exposed to chemical warfare agents; 2) compare the findings of factor analysis with those from an epidemiologic analysis of symptom prevalence; and 3) observe the behavior of fac...

BACKGROUND UK armed forces personnel who took part in the 1991 Gulf war experienced an increase in symptomatic ill health, colloquially known as Gulf war syndrome. Speculation about an Iraq war syndrome has already started. METHODS We compared the health of male regular UK armed forces personnel deployed to Iraq during the 2003 war (n=3642) with that of their colleagues who were not deployed ...

This paper discusses the enduring forces driving the global diffusion of military capability, whether during the cold war or other historical periods, and then considers the competitive dynamics characteristic of the superpower rivalry itself. I argue that the working of the so-called technological imperative along with loosely coupled action-reaction dynamics lead us to expect certain patterns...

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BACKGROUND Gulf War veterans have a number of health complaints. We therefore decided to carry out a systematic review to identify and summarize the findings from studies that have assessed multi-symptom conditions in Gulf War veterans and in an unexposed comparison group. METHOD Studies published between January 1990 and May 2004 were identified by searching a large number of electronic data...

AIMS Gulf War veterans report a high prevalence of musculoskeletal symptoms. The aim of this study was to establish whether there were abnormalities in bone turnover and remodelling in a group of symptomatic subjects who had served in the Gulf War. METHODS Iliac crest bone biopsies were obtained from 17 Gulf War veterans who were seeking litigation and compared with those of 13 age and sex ma...