Part of a larger study with universities across the country, University of Idaho Assistant Professor Colin Xu's lab will focus on developing machine learning models to interpret biological data from military members and determine who might be at greater risk of developing PTSD — and what treatments are more likely to be effective.
"If we're able to identify who's at risk beforehand," Xu said, "then we can help people get to the treatments that matter for them more quickly and help them get better using fewer resources."
About 7 percent of veterans will have PTSD at some point in their life, according to the national Veterans Affairs website, with female veterans having a rate of 13 percent. The likelihood of being affected changes with each service era: Veterans from the early 2000s to mid-2010s have a 29 percent chance of developing the disorder at some point in their life.
The general population sees lifetime PTSD rates of around 6 percent.
Clinical psychologist and university professor Jamie Derrick said being able to determine who might be at a higher risk of developing the disorder could allow at-risk populations to build up resilience for any "terrifying or life threatening" events they face.
"Most people wait until something goes wrong before they really invest in healing practices," she said. "And I think prevention is really important. Really important. And it would help people to live more whole and happy lives to invest in that."
Mental disorders are not uniform across affected people, though, Derrick said. While flashbacks to traumatic events are one of the more commonly known symptoms of PTSD, rumination, the physical sensation of fear, insomnia and mood swings are also common signs and can manifest differently depending on the person.
Though clinical applications are far in the future, a key piece of Xu's research is to determine if there are distinct subtypes of PTSD — perhaps with differing symptoms — that can be detected through data from hormone patches and vital-monitoring watches.
"The long -term goal is ... instead of just saying 'Hey, we have these three or four or five treatments, just pick at random and hope it works,'" he said, adding later that treatment options in reality tend to be based on accessibility and patient preference. "We can say, 'We have this personalized medicine model where it says, based on these biomarker data that you provided us from wearing this patch for a couple weeks, you seem to be of this type, and therefore this treatment is more likely to respond than other treatments.'"
With a Ph.D. in psychology, Xu has historically studied antidepressants, more recent research of his examining who might develop negative side effects on the drugs. He plans to use similar investigation techniques in the PTSD study, though he can't develop his software without the biological data from participant watches and hormone monitors.
An additional $4.8 million in federal grants will fund the creation of hormone monitors and wristbands that collect information about the wearer's biology at Tufts University, while researchers at Walter Reed Uniformed Services University and Northwestern University will recruit military members willing to wear the monitors — both with and without the disorder.
In a related research project, Xu's lab received $361,000 of a total $1.9 million in federal funding to explore how military members going on and returning from deployments impacts family violence, substance abuse, suicidality and other negative health outcomes in those families.
Similar to the goal of the PTSD research, Xu said, knowing what family members might be at a higher risk in some way because of a family deployment event has harm -prevention implications. This project relies on existing medical records.
"So those people, we might keep a closer eye on and have more peer support resources," he said. "Have more active checkups on how they're doing and things like that so that we can minimize the risk of those kind of health outcomes happening."
The PTSD project is slated to end in 2029, and the analysis of military family member health project is set for 2028.
Of the total $1.3 million in Department of Defense funding, most of the money will go towards hiring two post doctorate researchers and three graduate students.
People interested in working on either the PTSD or military family story can reach Xu at colinxu@uidaho.edu.
This article was updated Jan. 14 to clarify one of Jamie Derrick's statements.
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