This from USA Today: A battlefield study conducted by the Army on 20,000 soldiers during the troop surge in Iraq shows that more aggressive efforts to question and counsel GIs about their mental health reduce by nearly 80 percent the number who develop behavioral health illnesses during combat.

The results of the study, to be published Tuesday in the American Journal of Psychiatry, also show that 54 percent fewer soldiers contemplated suicide and that the number who needed to be sent home from Iraq with mental health problems dropped by nearly 70 percent.

"We're excited about what this study shows," says Maj. Gen. Patricia Horoho, Army deputy surgeon general. "It is the first direct evidence that a program [of more aggressive screening and treatment] is effective in preventing adverse behavioral health outcomes."

The Army will begin using screening and treatment methods from the study within six months, Horoho says.

Battlefield doctors who authored the study tracked six brigades attached to the 3rd Infantry Division fighting in Iraq during early 2007, at the height of a surge ordered by President Bush. At the core of the experiment was an effort to more thoroughly screen soldiers as they were heading off to war, the study says.

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