Abstract
Background
Reservists often have different experiences to regular military personnel which may impact their mental health.
Aims
To investigate the incidence of mental health problems in both active and veteran reservists and determine how this compares to regular service personnel and ex-regular veterans.
Method
Five studies which included reservist and/or veteran participants, a validated assessment of mental health problems, and provided primary data were included in the synthesis. Common mental health disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder and alcohol use disorder were examined.
Results
Nondeployed mobilized reservists were significantly less likely to report common mental health disorders than nondeployed regulars. There were no other significant differences between groups. Regardless deployed reservists reported more mental health problems than nondeployed reservists. Similarly, ex-regular deployed veterans were more likely to experience mental health difficulties than nondeployed ex-regular veterans. Notably, a large proportion of non-deployed reservists reported probable alcohol use disorders, indicating that problematic alcohol consumption may not be due to deployment in this group.
Conclusion
These results highlight the need for ongoing support for military regular, ex-regular and reservist personnel. Additional research is needed to examine potential risk and protective factors for mental health problems in both deployed and nondeployed reservists.
Overall, mobilized deployed reservists were more likely to experience mental health problems than non-deployed reservists. Nondeployed regulars reported significantly more common mental health problems than nondeployed mobilized reservists.
Reservists and (ex-)regulars reported similar rates of PTSD. This suggests reservists are vulnerable to developing PTSD following non-combat related trauma that may not lead to PTSD in regulars and this warrants future research.
Reservists were less likely to report problematic alcohol consumption compared to regular personnel and ex-regular veterans. The greatest amount of reservist problematic drinking was reported in non-deployed veteran reservists. This indicates problematic alcohol consumption is not deployment related in this group and highlights the need for ongoing formal support for alcohol use disorders in the UK Armed Forces.
Key points
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Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Data availability
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study.