Health-Related Quality of Life in Patients Served by the Department of Veterans Affairs

Abstract

The VA outpatients have substantially worse health status than non-VA populations. Mental health differences between the young and old veterans who use the VA health care system are sharply contrasting; the young veterans are sicker, suggesting substantially higher resource needs. Mental health differences may explain much of the worse health-related quality of life in young veterans. As health care systems continue to undergo a radical transformation, the Department of Veterans Affairs should focus on the provision of mental health services for its younger veteran.

Exploration of gender differences in how quality of life relates to posttraumatic stress disorder in male and female veterans

“…Both men and women who use the VA have poorer health relative to men and women in the general population [16,45]. However, focusing on symptoms in the treatment of any disorder reflects a narrow view of health and disease [22].…”

Physical activity in postdeployment Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation Enduring Freedom veterans using Department of Veterans Affairs services

“…This contrasts to Active Duty service in the U.S. Armed Forces, which involves jobs that are physical in nature and often includes regimented daily exercise. Additionally, the burden of medical morbidity and pain in the veteran population may limit physical activity in OIF/OEF veterans using VA, because these veterans have been shown to represent a lower socioeconomic group, have greater comorbidity, and have a greater prevalence of overweight and obesity than veterans not using VA [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][33][34]. The frequency of free-text responses indicating pain, depression, or disability in place of a favorite physical activity (n = 24) likely underrepresents the true prevalence, but taken together with the large percentage of participants endorsing pain or health as a limitation for physical activity (52% and 39%, respectively), it would be consistent with this national trend among VA users ( Table 3).…”

The Physical and Mental Health of A Large Military Cohort: Baseline Functional Health Status of the Millennium Cohort

“…This paper focuses on self-reported health status as measured by Medical Outcomes Study Short Form 36-item Survey for Veterans [19], a modified version of the Medical Outcomes Study 36-item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) [33]. Like the original SF-36, the Veterans SF-36 includes eight health scales which can be summarized into two summary scores, the mental component summary (MCS) and the physical component summary (PCS) [34][35][36][37]. Differences in the Veterans SF-36 include using 5-level response categories for the role emotional and role physical scales which provides more-precise estimates of role functional impairment [38,39].…”