Department of Defense Recovering Warrior Task Force: 2013–2014 Annual Report

As the conflict in Afghanistan drew to a close, approximately 1 million Service members were on track to leave the military and enter civilian life—many of them carrying visible and invisible residual effects of more than a decade of unprecedented deployment. Among this population, new posttraumatic stress disorder diagnoses outnumbered major limb amputations by a factor of 76 between 2001 and 2013. More than 300,00 new cases of traumatic brain injury were diagnosed in service members worldwide over a similar timeframe. This report, prepared by Insight for the Department of Defense (DoD) Recovering Warrior Task Force, examines the effectiveness of military Recovering Warrior policies and includes best practices and recommendations for how DoD and the military departments can more effectively address matters relating to the care, management, and transition of wounded, ill, and injured members of the Armed Forces.