Worse rate of mental health help for troops in Iraq now

Mental Health Providers Too Few For Troops
Army To Recruit Civilian Counselors To Work In War Zones In Iraq, Afghanistan
By LISA CHEDEKEL And MATTHEW KAUFFMAN Courant Staff Writers
March 7, 2008


Top Army health officials acknowledged Thursday that they don't have enough military mental health providers to meet the growing needs of troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan and said they will begin recruiting civilian counselors to work in the war zones.

The move comes as a new Army study of the mental health of troops deployed to war found that third and fourth combat deployments were wearing down soldiers' mental health at the same time that access to counseling and treatment was becoming more difficult.

Soldiers in Iraq surveyed by a team of experts in the fall of 2007 expressed more willingness to seek psychological help than those surveyed a year earlier, but reported more difficulties getting that help.

The Mental Health Advisory Team study — the fifth such study since the Iraq war began — reaffirmed findings from last year that troops on repeat deployments have higher rates of psychological problems and are more likely to take out their aggressions on Iraqi civilians.

About 27 percent of non-commissioned officers on third or fourth deployments to Iraq in 2007 met criteria for depression, anxiety or acute stress, compared with 18.5 percent on second tours and 12 percent who were on their first tour.

The study also reiterated last year's recommendation that troops' "dwell time" between deployments be increased so that they have sufficient time to "reset" their mental health. Most soldiers now have 12 to 15 months between tours.

"We see this multiple-deployment effect for the mental health problems, [and] we see a similar pattern for morale," said Lt. Col. Paul Bliese of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, who led the study.

"One of the conclusions that we draw from this is that soldiers are not resetting entirely before they get back into [the combat] theater. So they're not having the opportunity … to completely recover from the previous deployment when they go back into theater for the second or third deployment."

The study found that behavioral health providers were also struggling. Despite the Army's repeated emphasis on expanding psychological services to soldiers, the ratio of mental health providers to soldiers in Iraq dropped to one provider for every 734 troops in 2007 — down from one for every 387 in 2004.

In addition, military mental health providers in Iraq reported even higher rates of burnout and frustration with a lack of resources than they did in last year's study, with 75 percent saying there were insufficient resources to meet troops' needs. One in four providers expressed concerns about their own mental well-being.
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