Army women in support units exposed to combat don't have higher post-traumatic stress or depression rates than their male counterparts a few months after leaving Iraq, according to a new study.

It's believed to be the first research comparing the mental health of men and women doing violence-prone support jobs — medics, mechanics, drivers — in Iraq, says Army Lt. Col. Carl Castro, chief of military psychiatry at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. Castro reported his results last month to the American Psychological Association meeting in Washington, D.C.

"If the argument is, women can't handle the stresses of combat as well as men, we see no evidence of a sex difference in these units," Castro says. Women can't serve in frontline combat, "but truck drivers in Iraq have the dangerous jobs," he says, and Army women fill about 10 percent of such support jobs.

Castro gave mental disorder screening tests to a random sample of men and women in these posts — 50 women and 300 men — three months after ending deployment. He says there wasn't a statistical difference between the two sexes: about 6 percent of men had depression, 8 percent of women; 11 percent of the men and 12 percent of women had PTSD symptoms.

"It's possible that sex differences could develop later on," he says, "but right now we don't think women need any more mental health help than men."

He had no mental health reports on the soldiers before deployment, so he cannot say how combat affected any pre-existing problems.

Not everyone thinks it's a good idea to put women in positions that could come under fire. "It's not because women don't have 'the right stuff.' Women are very tough mentally," says Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America, a public policy group that favors traditional family values. "But the best-trained women still can't keep up with the best-trained men physically. If we're putting men in harm's way, we owe them battle colleagues who are just as strong as they are."

Although frontline combat is illegal for women, "the military has skirted that by putting them in these 'support' roles. It's tantamount to having them in combat," Crouse says.

Says Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women: "There is no job that women should be excluded from because of their gender. If you can do the job, you should have an opportunity to get the job. If you can't, you shouldn't be there, male or female."