Army's huge culture shift: No shame in mental health help

Army's huge culture shift: No shame in mental health help
By Gail Sheehy
Special for USA TODAY

Daniel Rodriguez joined the Army when his home life collapsed. His parents split. His father dropped from a heart attack. He was 18 and on the runty side for a high school football player, but with a dream of playing at a Division I college.

Three weeks after burying his father, the angry teen made his way to an Army recruitment center. Like so many of today's volunteers, he was looking for a new home, discipline and the directions for becoming a man.

But Iraq and Afghanistan are unique in America's wars, clouding that traditional coming-of-age road map. The invisible wounds of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and family breakup have soared for the military there, along with repeated redeployments and a 360-degree combat-alert range. The most glaring result is the 80% increase in suicides, averaging nearly one a day this year — the fastest pace in the nation's decade of war. This is the second year in a row that more active-duty soldiers have been lost to self-inflicted death than to combat.


These appalling statistics have given the Army a new mission — to treat those invisible wounds of war before soldiers come home with their mental composure shattered.
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