Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, 503 Robert Grant Avenue, Silver Spring, MD 20910, USA.
Int Rev Psychiatry. 2011 Apr;23(2):127-34. doi: 10.3109/09540261.2011.558834.
Mental health advisory teams (MHATs) conduct comprehensive mental health surveillance of US service members in combat environments. Since 2003, six teams have deployed to Iraq and four have deployed to Afghanistan, and results have played a key role influencing behavioural health policy. The repeated deployments of the teams have provided opportunities for processes to be refined, and this refinement has led to a scientifically rigorous and replicable approach. In this article we focus on two themes. The first theme is how changes in sampling have influenced the nature of the inferences drawn from the survey-based surveillance data. The second theme is how the ability to utilize different forms of data has served to strengthen the programme. Focusing on these two themes provides a way to discuss key findings, recommendations and limitations while also interspersing practical observations intended to help inform the design of broad-scale, in-theatre mental health surveillance efforts. We believe that future surveillance efforts should build on the lessons of the MHATs and attempt to replicate the more rigorous sampling methods; nonetheless, we also strive to convey that large surveillance efforts are valuable even if they cannot be executed with random sampling.
心理健康咨询小组（MHAT）对作战环境中的美国军人进行全面的心理健康监测。自 2003 年以来，已有 6 个小组部署到伊拉克，4 个小组部署到阿富汗，其结果在影响行为健康政策方面发挥了关键作用。这些小组的反复部署为完善流程提供了机会，这一完善过程形成了一种科学严谨且可复制的方法。在本文中，我们重点关注两个主题。第一个主题是抽样变化如何影响基于调查的监测数据得出的推断的性质。第二个主题是利用不同形式的数据的能力如何为该计划提供支持。关注这两个主题提供了一种讨论主要发现、建议和局限性的方式，同时穿插了旨在帮助为大规模的战场心理健康监测工作提供信息的实际观察。我们认为，未来的监测工作应该借鉴 MHAT 的经验教训，并尝试复制更严格的抽样方法；尽管如此，我们也努力传达这样一种观点，即即使无法进行随机抽样，大规模的监测工作也是有价值的。
