Military Suicides: A Treatment Issue

Suicides: A Treatment Issue
By LISA CHEDEKEL Courant Staff Writer
October 3, 2007
In recent months, the military has scrambled to hire additional mental health workers to treat troubled troops, hoping to allay concerns raised by a Pentagon task force and soldiers' advocates about inadequate access to care.But a new Army report suggests that the quality of care, as much as the quantity of providers, may be a factor in the rising incidence of suicides among active-duty service members.A recently released, first-ever analysis of Army suicides shows that more than half the 948 soldiers who attempted suicide in 2006 had been seen by mental health providers before the attempt - 36 percent within just 30 days of the event. Of those who committed suicide in 2006, a third had an outpatient mental health visit within three months of killing themselves, and 42 percent had been seen at a military medical facility within three months.

Among soldiers who were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan when they attempted suicide in 2005 and 2006, a full 60 percent had been seen by outpatient mental health workers before the attempts. Forty-three percent of the deployed troops who attempted suicide had been prescribed psychotropic medications, the report shows.

The report offers no details on the type or duration of mental health care that troops received before they tried to kill themselves. But it is prompting calls from some soldiers' advocates for better training of medical and behavioral health specialists in recognizing and treating service members in distress."It's the patient care, the quality of care, that's the issue," said Andrew Pogany, an investigator for the advocacy group Veterans for America. "A lot of the soldiers I talk to, they say [the military] doesn't provide anything except for group therapy and meds. Some places, you can't even get near a psychiatrist.
click post title for the rest


Group threapy does not work for all. In some cases, it makes PTSD worse. It's a bad practice to force them into group before they are ready. Are they still using badaid?