Army phasing in new program to screen for PTSD

Army phasing in new program to screen for PTSD
By Charlie Coon, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Wednesday, July 23, 2008



Active-duty soldiers can expect to be asked how they’re doing, and not just physically, the next time they visit Army clinics in Vicenza, Italy, and Vilseck and Schweinfurt, Germany.

The three clinics are phasing in a program called RESPECT-MIL in which primary-care doctors routinely screen patients for post-traumatic stress disorder.

The three communities, along with 12 Army bases in the United States where the program is used, are sites with high concentrations of troops who have been deployed to war zones.

"These are the most likely areas for a high level of referrals for PTSD and depression," said Dr. (Lt. Col.) Raymond L. Gundry, deputy commander of outlying clinics at the Heidelberg, Germany-based Europe Regional Medical Command.

The program — its full name is Re-Engineering Systems for the Primary Care and Treatment of Depression and PTSD in the Military — is expected to go Army-wide in the future, Gundry said.

For now, officials at the RESPECT-MIL headquarters in Fort Bragg, N.C., are holding teleconferences every two weeks with the 15 original sites to evaluate how the program is going so far, Gundry said.
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