Attempted suicide was not enough to keep her from being deployed?

Report: Longview soldier committed suicide in Afghanistan
Commanders not told about history of mental health issues
Sunday, October 14, 2012

LONGVIEW — A 20-year-old soldier from Longview killed herself in Afghanistan last December as she served alone in a guard tower, where she was stationed despite a long history of mental health issues that was not communicated to her supervisors, according to a new report.

An Army investigation determined that Spc. Mikayla Bragg's commanding officers were never told she had made an apparent previous suicide attempt while serving stateside in Fort Knox, even though officials at the Kentucky base knew of it. The (Longview) Daily News obtained the investigation report through a Freedom of Information Act request.

"I found out after her death she had been seen (at Fort Knox) for issues like this. Of course, the information was never provided to her commander (in Afghanistan)," wrote one frustrated Army captain, whose name was redacted. "Real effective policy they have in place."

Among the findings were that her superiors weren't told she had spent 45 days in an Army hospital at Fort Knox for mental -health treatment just months before she deployed. She had been hospitalized after telling doctors she wanted to crash a car and injure herself.

They also didn't know she had weaned herself off her prescribed anti-anxiety medication to satisfy requirements to deploy. That was six months before she shot and killed herself while stationed alone in a guard tower on Dec. 21 at Forward Operating Base Salerno.

"It is my opinion that (Bragg) 'fell through the cracks' created by the lack of information sharing that had been repeatedly requested and denied," a brigade behavioral health officer stationed at Camp Salerno wrote to investigators.
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