Developing a Problem-Solving Treatment for Gulf War Illness: Cognitive Rehabilitation of Veterans with Complex Post-Deployment Health Concerns

Social workers play an essential role in facilitating veterans’ reintegration into their communities and daily lives. Many veterans, particularly those who have been deployed, experience comorbid physical, psychological, and neurocognitive problems that significantly impact their health function in multiple domains. Veterans deployed to Operation Desert Shield/Operation Desert Storm have reported a wide range of persistent, diverse, medically unexplained symptoms that have come to be known as Gulf War Illness (GWI). These symptoms make it difficult for veterans to participate in daily activities, thereby impacting health function. There are few effective treatments to improve the health function for those with GWI. The goals of this article are to provide social workers with information about GWI, and describe how we modified an evidence-based treatment, problem-solving therapy, for veterans with GWI. This tailoring of an existing treatment may serve as a model for adapting evidence-based treatments for veterans and civilians with multiple chronic symptoms and other complex health concerns. Furthermore, the detailed description provided may facilitate dissemination of problem-solving therapy among social workers and trainees.