Defending resilience training while suicides went up unnonscionable conduct

How many times have you read about the DOD spending $140 million on teaching resilience? I know I've read that countless times over the last couple of years and reports seem to be just fine and dandy with that amount of money. They seem to have no problem believing that it was money well spent even though the number of suicides has gone up, even though the number of programs to prevent suicides has hit over 900. Even though they have been doing all of this funding and ducking since 2007.

Things like this from 2010

$33.8 billion for ACS accounts for efforts affecting our entire Air Force—from the development and training of our Airmen to regaining acquisition excellence. Airmen and Families. The Air Force is proud of its commitment to supporting its Airmen and families. The nearly two decades of sustained combat operations has imposed extraordinary demands on them and underscores the need to remain focused on sustaining quality of life and supporting programs as a top priority. To help address the demands, in 2010 the Air Force executed the Year of the Air Force Family and highlighted support programs focused on three outcomes: Fostering a Strong Air Force Community; Strengthening an Airman's Sense of Belonging; and Improving Airman and Family Resiliency. Includes $37 million to reduce the likelihood of a repeated Fort Hood tragedy, $8 million in Resiliency Training and $1.5 million for Chaplain Recruitment for 2012 (Air Force, General Norton Schwartz, February 17, 2011

and this

$1.7 Billion Provides $1.7 billion to fund vital Soldier and Family programs to provide a full range of essential services to include the Army Campaign for Heath Promotion, Risk Reduction, and Suicide Prevention; Sexual Harassment/Assault Expanded Survivor Outreach Services to over 26,000 Family members, providing unified support and advocacy, and enhancing survivor benefits for the Families of our Soldiers who have made the ultimate sacrifice. ★ Graduated more than 3,000 Soldiers and Civilians from the Master Resilience Trainer course. ★ Surpassed one million Soldiers, Civilians and Family members who have completed the Army’s Global Assessment Tool to begin their personal assessment and resilience training. (Reported in 2011 for 2012 by the Army) $3 Billion for Resilience from the Marine Corps/Navy incorporated in the distribution report for war ships.

and this

The $125-million Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program requires soldiers to undergo the kind of mental pre-deployment tests and training that they have always had to undergo physically. Already, more than 1.1 million have had the mental assessments.

But reporters don't seem interested in the fact that the above is a just a taste of what has been going on an is public record. Each year the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force give a posture statement to Congress about what they have accomplished with the money they received as well as what they need and what they plan on doing with it.

We stopped talking about $125 million a long time ago and I've collected data on hundreds of billions, not millions spent on the notion people can be trained to be resilient even though many experts have said it is basically hogwash. Other than that, all you have to do is look at the results. Higher suicides, higher attempted suicides, higher calls to suicide prevention hotline and the rest of the bad that comes with telling these men and women that combat is nothing you can't overcome if you train right.

You can read this report DOES COMPREHENSIVE SOLDIER FITNESS WORK? CSF RESEARCH FAILS THE TEST

Army Program Aims to Build Troops' Mental Resilience to Stress
PBS
Dec. 14, 2011

In 2009, the Army launched a program designed to help the country's 1.4 million people in uniform cope after tours in Iraq or Afghanistan. Betty Ann Bowser reports on the goals of the $140 million Comprehensive Soldier Fitness initiative, and the controversy it has created.

Watch Army Program Designed to Alleviate PTSD for Troops... on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Transcript
JUDY WOODRUFF: Even as U.S. troops leave Iraq this month and, in three years, will depart Afghanistan, the psychological wounds of war will last for some time.

The NewsHour's health correspondent, Betty Ann Bowser, reports on a new Army program to help families and soldiers cope and the questions surrounding it.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Here at Fort Bragg, N.C., the Army has always trained its soldiers to hit the bulls eye. And it's always taught the importance of staying fit. Now the Army is trying to teach its soldiers new skills to fight a war in unchartered territory in the human mind.

STAFF SGT. GABRIEL PRICE, U.S. Army: Everything begins with a thought. Everybody say that with me. Everything begins with a thought.

CLASS: Everything begins with a thought.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Staff Sgt. Gabriel Price is a trainer in the largest psychological program in the Army's history. Called Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, it's being given to virtually all 1.1 million people in uniform.

STAFF SGT. GABRIEL PRICE: There are some emotions out there that we don't handle so well.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The long years of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan have produced alarming increases in post-traumatic stress disorder, known as PTSD, depression and suicide.

So the Army is betting 140 million taxpayers' dollars that it can do something about those problems by changing the way soldiers think about bad experiences. But, officially, leaders say there's another reason.

Brigadier Gen. Rhonda Cornum is the senior commanding officer of Comprehensive Soldier Fitness.

BRIG. GEN. RHONDA CORNUM, Comprehensive Soldier Fitness: The real goal of this program is to give everybody in the Army certainly, and to include families and civilians, the opportunity to become as psychologically strong as they can.

The psychological training was developed by psychologist Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania. The Army gave his school a $34 million no-bid contract to develop and run the program.

Seligman is known as the father of positive psychology, which says that people can lead happier lives by learning how to better process negative thoughts. His theories are the basis of the Army program.

BRYANT WELCH: They had schoolchildren, each night, write down three positive things about themselves. And then they noticed in a follow-up study that those children felt better about themselves.

But to go from that to saying that we can have a soldier in a foxhole who says positive things about himself and follows the precepts of this program, is going to watch his buddy blown to smithereens and spend four tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and come out feeling better about himself, there is a shallowness to the assessment that, from my vantage point, I find abhorrent.

read more here

As you can see by the results of what happened over the last few years, abhorrent has been proven right. This is also from PBS About 53 percent of those who died by suicide in the military in 2011, the most recent year for which data is available, had no history of deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan, according (pdf) to the Defense Department. And nearly 85 percent of military members who took their lives had no direct combat history, meaning they may have been deployed but not seen action. (December 2012)

While this is from National Institute of Mental Health
DEPLOYMENT: The suicide rate was highest among those who are currently deployed (18.3 deaths per 100,000) and dropped after deployment (15.9 per 100,000). For the entire TAIHOD dataset (from 2004 through 2008), 23 percent of the soldiers studied were currently deployed, 42 percent had never been deployed and 35 percent had been previously deployed but were not currently deployed. (2011) Last time I checked, 25+35=60% so even this report is wrong because it adds up to 102% but I think they were just rounding off.