Numbers and proportions of U.S. military members in treatment for mental disorders over time, active component, January 2000-September 2013.

This report examines trends in health record documentation of the treatment for mental disorders of active component U.S. military service members from January 2000 through September 2013. Inpatient and outpatient records were used to estimate the numbers and proportions of service members who received such treatment and the durations and intensities of courses of treatment. Annual numbers of service members who received treatment for mental disorders and the annual numbers of treatment courses increased steadily from 2004-2012. More than half of service members who received such treatment had only one treatment course, but the annual numbers of such single treatment courses increased by 60% during the 13-year surveillance period. Annual numbers of treatment courses that consisted of more than 30 encounters increased 5.6-fold between 2001 and 2012 and the mean number of days per treatment course markedly increased during the last half of the period. The proportion of overall service time contributed by members who were in treatment for mental disorders increased from about 1% in 2000 to 3.5% in 2012. The methods and findings of this analysis are compared and contrasted with other published studies and reports about mental health problems in the Armed Forces since the beginning of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.