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

• Published in: Journal of occupational rehabilitation 2015-09, Vol.25 (3), p.569-576
• Main Authors: Fokkens, Andrea S., Groothoff, Johan W., van der Klink, Jac J. L., Popping, Roel, Stewart, Roy E., van de Ven, Lex, Brouwer, Sandra, Tuinstra, Jolanda
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adult; Armed forces; Clinical Psychology; Compensation; Disability; Disability Evaluation; Disability management; Disabled Persons - psychology; Environmental Health; Female; Health Psychology; Humans; Interview, Psychological; Interviews; Male; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Military; Military aspects; Military Medicine - methods; Military service; Netherlands; Observer Variation; Occupational Medicine/Industrial Medicine; Orthopedics; People with disabilities; Physical instruments; Post traumatic stress disorder; Rehabilitation; Reproducibility of Results; Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic - diagnosis; Studies; Trauma; Veterans; Veterans - psychology
• ISSN: 1053-0487; 1573-3688
• DOI: 10.1007/s10926-014-9563-0

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.