Study finds ‘Battlemind’ is beneficial?

Sorry but I just choked on my coffee.

Col. Carl Castro should have known better when he developed this program. From what is said about this program and the evidence, this program does more harm than good. Not that any of these people would ever listen to me or the veterans or the BBC investigation that showed the troops arriving in Afghanistan with 11 1/2 minutes of BattleMind training crammed into two straight days of briefings. There are parts of this program that are good and should be used but they begin with telling the troops that they can "toughen" their minds, which translates to them that if they end up with PTSD, it's their fault because they didn't get their brain tough enough. Try telling that to a Marine.

They can say whatever they want, but when you see the suicide rate go up every year, see them still not wanting to seek help, still not being treated for this as if they have nothing to be ashamed of, then there is a problem. You cannot begin by telling them they can train their brain and then tell them it's ok if they failed to do it. While they may be able to prepare for combat what they cannot do is change the fact they are human, exposed to abnormal events in combat situations and have normal reactions of stress after as a normal human! No matter what the cause, people get wounded by PTSD. The difference between civilians and the troops is that the troops are exposed to it over and over and over again when they deploy into combat. Telling them they just didn't do a good enough job to toughen their minds is the wrong way to begin what could have been a really great program. Again it's just my opinion and based on 26 years of all of this. Plus add in the fact that the Montana National Guard had to come up with their own program along with a lot of other units. That should have been an alarm bell right there, but no one heard it that is in charge.

Col. Carl Castro, Ph.D. – Fort Detrick, MD
Col. Castro was most recently appointed Director of Military Operations,
Medicine Research Program, Headquarters, US Army Medical Research and
Materiel Command, Fort Detrick, Maryland. He formerly served as the chief of
military psychiatry at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, and was the
Commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research Unit-Europe in Heidelberg,
Germany. In addition to serving in multiple deployments to Bosnia, he has been
chief and program manager of several different medical research programs. He
is a graduate of Wichita State University and holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in
psychology from the University of Colorado. He is the author of over 50 scientific
publications, including a major study published in the New England Journal of
Medicine. The study, which involved 6,200 soldiers and Marines and was
conducted by a team at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, is the first
attempt to understand the psychological effects of a U.S. war while it is ongoing.
Most of the participants were screened within three or four months of returning
from battle. The result, Combat Duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mental Health
Problems, and Barriers to Care (Charles W. Hoge, M.D., Carl A. Castro, Ph.D.,
Stephen C. Messer, Ph.D., Dennis McGurk, Ph.D., Dave I. Cotting, Ph.D., and
Robert L. Koffman, M.D., M.P.H.) is a seminal study in the effects of combat on
mental health.
http://www.smith.edu/ssw//admin/documents/CarlCastro.pdf

Study finds ‘Battlemind’ is beneficial
Stars and Stripes - Washington,DC,USA
Training to reduce post-combat stress has made strides
By Nancy Montgomery, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Tuesday, February 17, 2009
HEIDELBERG, Germany — New training intended to reduce post-combat psychological distress provides "small but significant" improvements in soldiers’ mental health, according to a study.

Among soldiers who returned from Iraq and participated in "Battlemind Training," fewer reported sleep problems, and there were less-severe post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, compared with soldiers who had received either no post-deployment mental health training or a briefing about stress, according to research psychologists with the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

"We’ve completed three groups of randomized trials which have demonstrated that Battlemind training has a positive impact on soldiers’ mental health months later," said Amy Adler, a lead researcher on the project. "The effects are not huge. We’re not curing disorders."

The study found that in soldiers who had seen extensive combat, Battlemind training resulted in a 14 percent reduction in severity of post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms.

And while 60 percent of soldiers without the training reported sleep problems, just 30 percent of those who’d had the Battlemind class said they were having trouble sleeping after returning home. click link for more