RENEE MONTAGNE, host: In Britain, members of the UK armed forces on prolonged deployment are likely to drink too much, suffer stress, and have problems at home. That's according to new research which finds prolonged periods of service in Iraq and Afghanistan are putting members of the British armed forces at risk of psychological problems.</s>RENEE MONTAGNE, host: NPR's Rob Gifford reports.</s>ROB GIFFORD: In research published this week in the British Medical Journal, a team at King's College London looked at the effects of the number and lengths of deployment of troops to Iraq and Afghanistan in a random sample of 5,500 military personnel. Professor Matthew Hotopf was the member of the research team.</s>Dr. MATTHEW HOTOPF (King's College): What this research shows is that you can kind of push people a certain amount, and doing two six-month deployments in a three-year period, which is the army's own kind of recommended maximum, looks like people are managing pretty well on that sort of amount of deployment. But if you go over that, and let's say have 18 months in a three-year period, then you are probably are running into problems.</s>ROB GIFFORD: The report found that long deployments increase the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and also led to an increase in severe alcohol abuse and problems at home.</s>ROB GIFFORD: Barry Donan(ph) is a former soldier who suffered from PTSD.</s>Mr. BARRY DONAN (Former Soldier): We are talking about soldiers and stuff who at the end of the day are just human beings. Everybody has a stretch point where they break. And obviously it stands to reason, it's common sense, that the more that you're deployed, the harder you're going to find things.</s>ROB GIFFORD: The Ministry of Defense has put together so-called harmony guidelines to make clear the maximum times service personnel should spend away from their families and how long units should rest between operations. The ministry said rates of mental illness among soldiers are low and that the government provides a significant amount of support to British soldiers and their families.</s>ROB GIFFORD: Rob Gifford, NPR News, London.
Members of Britain's armed forces who are on prolonged deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan are likely to drink too much and have problems at home, according to a new study. Researchers say lengthy missions are putting the U.K. military at risk of psychological problems.