About

Carl A. Castro is a professor and director of the Military and Veterans Programs at the Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work at the University of Southern California. He also serves as the director of the USC-RAND Epstein Family Foundation Center for Veterans Policy Research. Castro is a retired U.S. Army Colonel with over 30 years of service, having participated in campaigns such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Operation Northern Watch, and the Iraq War. His research focuses on the needs of active-duty military, veterans, and their families, including military transitions, trauma, and suicidality. He explores the military culture that influences acceptance and integration of service members and veterans, the effects of military trauma and stress on service members and their families, and the process of transitioning into and out of military service. Castro has chaired numerous NATO and international research groups and served on several National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine committees. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the National Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare. His work includes understanding social connectedness in veterans, evaluating military transition processes, and applying artificial intelligence to reduce military suicides.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Medicine
• Psychiatry
• Demography
• Computer Science
• Clinical psychology
• Gender studies
• Psychoanalysis
• Environmental health
• Geography
• Criminology
• Gerontology
• Philosophy
• Epistemology

Selected publications

• Daily Associations Between Perceived Stress, Pain Intensity, and Alcohol Use Among Veterans With and Without Moderate‐to‐Severe Chronic Pain

  Stress and Health · 2026-02-01

  articleOpen access

  Chronic pain is prevalent among military veterans and commonly presents with perceived stress and alcohol use. Allostatic load models suggest moderate-severe chronic pain may reflect a state of physiological dysregulation with heightened associations between pain and behavioural health symptoms. Yet little is known about daily associations between pain intensity, perceived stress, and alcohol use in veterans with and without moderate-severe chronic pain. This study examined day-to-day associations between pain intensity, perceived stress, and alcohol use among veterans, and whether associations differ between those with moderate-severe chronic pain and those with less severe pain. A sample of United States military veterans (n = 74) completed smartphone-based daily diary surveys for up to 3 months, providing 4307 days of data. Multi-group dynamic structural equation modelling examined within-person, day-to-day associations between symptoms, among veterans with moderate-severe chronic pain and those with less severe pain. Among veterans with moderate-severe chronic pain, bidirectional positive day-to-day associations emerged between pain intensity and perceived stress (b = 0.06-0.13), and between perceived stress and alcohol use (b = 0.05-0.07). Pain intensity also predicted increased next-day alcohol use (b = 0.04). Perceived stress appeared to act as a mechanism linking alcohol use to subsequent pain intensity (b = 0.01). For veterans with less severe pain, symptom associations differed markedly; higher perceived stress predicted lower next-day pain intensity (b = -0.05). Among veterans with moderate-severe chronic pain, day-to-day associations between pain intensity, perceived stress, and alcohol use appear more entangled. These veterans may experience heightened stress reactivity and poorer coping, requiring tailored interventions to monitor and address day-to-day symptom fluctuations.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Moral injury among Ukrainian soldiers: Firsthand accounts of psychological struggles in the Russia–Ukraine war

  Military Psychology · 2026-02-07

  article

  This article provides firsthand accounts of the combat experiences of Ukrainian soldiers, emphasizing the psychological toll of their exposure to morally injurious events during modern combat operations. Case studies illustrate the various contexts in which moral injuries might occur involving both military members and civilians. Other psychological issues that co-occur with moral issues as a result of combat exposures are presented including traumatic stress, profound grief, and various threats to individual identity. The authors include an analysis of the utility of the recent American Psychiatric Association's (APA) revision of DSM-5-TR that now includes moral issues and how this conceptualization captures the experiences of soldiers fighting in the Russia-Ukraine War. The case studies presented reveal that there remain important experiences and responses that are not fully captured by the new APA conceptualization of moral injury, such as existential ethical crisis, survivor guilt, disruption of one's role or identity, and the failure of others to uphold societal norms and expectations. Various approaches to facilitate recovery from moral injury are discussed. These approaches include the use of debriefings, remembrance memorials and structured therapeutic interventions. These approaches are intended to facilitate the soldier's recovery from moral injury by providing immediate emotional relief, and by facilitating the soldier's cognitive awareness of how morally injurious events can change and shape individual and collective identity. This study highlights the unique challenges faced by military personnel in modern, high-intensity warfare, and the need for early and targeted mental health interventions, including building resilience and promoting psycho-social well-being.

  PublisherDOI

• Daily associations between posttraumatic stress disorder, cannabis use, and negative affect among veterans

  Psychiatry Research · 2025-07-04

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Suicide-Related Disclosure Intention Among Active-Duty Servicemembers: A Generalized Linear Mixed-Model Tree Analysis

  Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research · 2025-11-18

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Mediating pathways from potentially morally injurious events to PTSD: A longitudinal cohort study of U.S. post-9/11 veterans

  Journal of Psychiatric Research · 2025-12-16

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The 3T model of military veteran radicalization and extremism: exploring risk factors and protective strategies

  Frontiers in Sociology · 2025-03-12 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  In the aftermath of several wars within the last century, seminal research forewarned against the rising tide of radicalization and violent extremism (VE) among military veterans. Building on the pioneering work, the current study explores risk and protective factors related to military veteran extremism. Utilizing the retrospective thick description approach, the study utilized both primary (e.g., interviews) and open-source (e.g., court transcripts) data to examine and contextualize the VE trajectory across the military lifecycle (premilitary, military, postmilitary), as informed by people from various social networks (e.g., family, civilian/premilitary). The select sample comprised 30 VE veterans and 30 VE civilians who committed/planned a VE act between 2003 and 2019, and a comparison group of 10 non-VE veterans (i.e., veterans who resisted radicalization and VE). Directed content analyses results yielded a conceptual model reflecting three general risk factors ( Transmission of Prejudice, Trauma and Adversity, and Transition ) common among civilian and veterans alike. In addition, behavioral and cognitive strategies related to three general protective strategies ( Resistance against Transmission of Prejudice, Addressing Trauma and Overcoming Adversity, Navigating Transitions ) were found to steer veterans away from radicalization and VE across the military lifecycle. Implications for future research are discussed.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• “My Body Will Remember What My Mind Wants to Forget”: Towards a Bio-cultural Vulnerability Model of Veteran Multi-morbidity

  Culture Medicine and Psychiatry · 2025-08-12

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Army Wives: Exploring the Social Determinants of Health in a Population With Universal Health Care in the United States

  Armed Forces & Society · 2025-04-25

  articleSenior author

  Guided by the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Social Determinants of Health (SDH) conceptual framework the purpose of this study was to explore the SDH among military spouses, who have universal access to health care. Two research questions guided this study: (1) What SDH factors are significantly associated with Army wives’ self-reported health, and (2) What SDH level of factors best explains Army wives’ self-rated health. The present study is a secondary analysis of survey data collected in 2012 from 327 U.S. Army wives. Bivariate pairwise correlations and hierarchical linear regressions (HLR) were used to examine determinant categories outlined in the SDH framework. Results suggest significant bivariate associations in most determinant categories. The best-fitting HLR models were those with all determinant categories. These preliminary findings suggest that although universal health care can improve mental and physical health equity, other SDH factors within and across multiple determinant categories can contribute to persistent inequities.

  PublisherDOI

• An Intersectional Analysis of Women's Experiences of Inclusion in the United States Army

  Sex Roles · 2024-10-19 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Importance of Military Identity in Understanding the Relationship Between Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Adverse Family Functioning for Post-9/11 Veterans

  Journal of Military Social Work and Behavioral Health Services · 2024-04-02 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms among service members appear to have a stronger impact on functioning in military families compared to civilian families. To better understand this relationship, this study applied the concepts explained by Social Identity Theory to explore how a Veteran's social identity interacts with PTSD symptoms to affect family functioning. The sample included Veteran parents (N = 291) from San Francisco, CA and Chicago, IL who completed a cross-sectional survey about their well-being and transition out of service, including measures of PTSD, military identity, and family functioning. Linear regression showed a Veteran's social identification with the military had significant main effects on adverse family functioning (β = 1.5, p = .001) and significantly moderated the relationship between PTSD and adverse family functioning (β = −0.02, p = .03). The interaction shows that higher perceptions of the military as family appeared to attenuate the relationship between PTSD symptoms and adverse family functioning up to a certain point. Our findings suggest that a Veteran's greater desire to go back to the military or stronger feelings that the military was their family protected the functioning of their family from their PTSD symptoms. However, when a Veteran had the highest possible desire to go back to the military or the strongest feeling like the military was their family, there was no effect on the relationship between PTSD symptoms and family functioning. Findings suggest the need to better understand how dimensions and strength of military identity can affect the relationship between PTSD symptoms and family functioning.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Sara Kintzle

  University of Southern California

  90 shared

• Charles W. Hoge

  Metropolitan State University of Denver

  82 shared

• Amy B. Adler

  Walter Reed Army Institute of Research

  65 shared

• Dennis McGurk

  United States Army Medical Command

  50 shared

• Jeffrey L. Thomas

  40 shared

• Paul D. Bliese

  University of South Carolina

  31 shared

• Kathrine Sullivan

  27 shared

• Shaddy K. Saba

  RAND Corporation

  27 shared

Awards & honors

• Gerson Award, American Psychological Association 2017
• Fulbright Specialist, J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarsh…
• Fellow, American Psychological Association
• Fellow, National Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare