==== Front Innov Aging Innov Aging innovateage Innovation in Aging 2399-5300 Oxford University Press US 10.1093/geroni/igaa057.979 igaa057.979 Abstracts Session 2935 (Poster) Mental and Psychological Health AcademicSubjects/SOC02600 Health Characteristics and Treatment Patterns of VHA Veterans Diagnosed With PTSD in Later Life Dang Linh Jedele Jenefer Veterans Health Administration, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States 2020 16 12 2020 16 12 2020 4 Suppl 1 Program Abstracts from The GSA 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting “Turning 75: Why Age Matters”305 306 © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America.2020This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Abstract Older adults may exhibit symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) after a traumatic event, even if they do not meet the criteria for a full diagnosis. This sub-clinical PTSD affects 7-15% of older adults and is associated with elevated depressive symptoms, suicidal ideation, and poorer physical health. Individuals with sub-clinical PTSD often experience worsening symptoms, resulting in a full diagnosis of PTSD, albeit late onset. This evaluation informs the Veterans Health Administration (VHA)’s understanding of the developmental course of PTSD in older Veterans. VHA administrative data were used to examine health characteristics and service utilization in the five years before and five years after the initial VHA documentation of PTSD. We identified a cohort of Veterans (n=27,610), alive and with at least 1 encounter in all evaluation years, with a first PTSD diagnosis documented between ages 50-59, a cohort outside of the average age of diagnosis, but before Medicare eligibility. We compared periods before and after diagnosis across different ages of first diagnosis (50-54, 55-59). Veterans diagnosed at later ages (55-59) had a greater number of mental and physical health conditions. Increasing VHA use preceded a PTSD diagnosis in both groups, but the increase was steeper among those diagnosed at 55-59. Future analyses will compare these patterns to those of Veterans diagnosed at younger ages. Findings from this work may provide a profile of persons at risk for late-life PTSD for use in targeting interventions earlier to reduce the risk of developing worsening PTSD symptoms in late life.