This is in a paper our group presented. At this time, I think there is some evidence that people who were exposed to physical and sexual abuse when they were young were at increased risk of mental health problems. Childhood abuse plus deployment and combat exposure had an additive effect. That's probably the strongest predeployment risk factor.
At this time, there's a lot of interest in psycho-educational interventions. We've got physical training. Can we do some mental health training? The forces' members can probably answer what's happening. My understanding is there isn't a lot of evidence for that, but trying to prevent illness has always been one of the core pieces.
At this time, I don't think we have a pie-in-the-sky...that this is the perfect thing to do. There's been interest in whether you had a history of a mental health problem...if we should try to minimize people being deployed. That's also been a very controversial area, because if you look at serious mental illness, like schizophrenia or a psychotic illness, it makes some sense, but distress, depression, anxiety.... If you exclude everybody, then you won't have a military either.
I don't think at this point we have evidence, but the forum and the partnerships could allow for intervention studies and those kinds of things, and our study is trying to do that as well.