Thirty-five percent of servicemembers returning from the Iraq war have sought professional help for mental-health issues, according to a Defense Department study.

The Baltimore Sun reported March 1 that the report, the first to comprehensively examine the mental health of returning soldiers, said that a smaller percentage of Iraq veterans had serious problems. "We recognize there have been problems after every war, the extent of which we don't know," said Dr. Michael E. Kilpatrick, deputy director of deployment health support for the Pentagon.

"The most important finding is that a large number of soldiers and Marines are using mental-health services very soon after they get home," said study author Col. Charles Hoge of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

But some veterans groups said that Iraq vets need more help than they are getting. "We've got 35 years of history from the Vietnam War that if they don't receive proper care, they turn to drugs and alcohol, they lose their homes. It's happening again," said Steve Robinson, director of the National Gulf War Resource Center.

The 35 percent of Iraq vets seeking mental-health treatment compares to 21 percent of returning veterans from Afghanistan and 24 percent of those who served elsewhere in the world. About 12 percent of Iraq veterans suffered serious mental or emotional problems, Hoge said.

Experts said that the Iraq war is especially stressful because it a counterinsurgency operation with no defined front lines, meaning that soldiers rarely can relax and let down their guard.

The research was published in the March 1, 2006 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.