You fear most what you do not understand: the need for mitigation strategies to deal with health related psychological threats in deployed environments.
People fear most what they do not understand and psychological screening of deployed land based ADF personnel has supported this proposition. Fear of exposure to toxic agents in deployed populations is a consistent theme in Return to Australian Psychological Screening (RtAPS) processes. The RtAPS process is conducted for all land based personnel either immediately before return to Australia or within seventy-two hours of arriving back in country. As
part of this process trends and potential psychological threats are identified for action by the chain of command. This paper will summarise some key health related themes that have emerged from this process. Understanding of these threats in order to develop mitigation strategies should be a very high priority for joint health planners, as mitigation of these threats is not only important for the longer term health and well being of the individual, but is an important issue for force protection and maintenance.
