The Mental Disability Military Assessment Tool: A Reliable Tool for Determining Disability in Veterans with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder

Overview

Journal J Occup Rehabil

Publisher Springer

Specialties Occupational Medicine
Rehabilitation Medicine

Date 2015 Jan 10

PMID 25573017

Citations 4

Authors

Andrea S Fokkens

Johan W Groothoff

Jac J L van der Klink

Roel Popping

Roy E Stewart

Lex van de Ven

Sandra Brouwer

Jolanda Tuinstra

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Purpose: An assessment tool was developed to assess disability in veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) due to a military mission. The objective of this study was to determine the reliability, intra-rater and inter-rater variation of the Mental Disability Military (MDM) assessment tool.

Methods: Twenty-four assessment interviews of veterans with an insurance physician were videotaped. Each videotaped interview was assessed by a group of five independent raters on limitations of the veterans using the MDM assessment tool. After 2 months the raters repeated this procedure. Next the intra-rater and inter-rater variation was assessed with an adjusted version of AG09 computing weighted percentage agreement.

Results: The results of this study showed that both the intra-rater variation and inter-rater variation on the ten subcategories of the MDM assessment tool were small, with an agreement of 84-100% within raters and 93-100% between raters.

Conclusions: The MDM assessment tool proves to be a reliable instrument to measure PTSD limitations in functioning in Dutch military veterans who apply for disability compensation. Further research is needed to assess the validity of this instrument.

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