Was Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Designed to Fail?

UPDATE Keep in mind that I have no inside information but managed to report the same findings.  Not just yesterday but last year when I wrote my book and since 2009 when I warned about this program would in fact increase military suicides. I have only been proven right because I paid attention!

Report: Military efforts to prevent mental illness ineffective
FROM USA TODAY
Gregg Zoroya
February 20, 2014

There's little evidence that the military's efforts to prevent mental illness among troops are effective, a panel of scientists has concluded.

The military has produced dozens of programs aimed at preventing mental illness among troops during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but there's little evidence that most of them work, a blue-ribbon panel of scientists said in a report released Thursday.

The findings by a committee of 13 experts appointed by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies come as about 1,000 Iraq- and Afghanistan-era veterans are being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder each week, according to data from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

"There's no substantive indication of effectiveness (in the military prevention programs) and most importantly, there's no evidence of an enduring impact," said panelist David Rudd, provost at the University of Memphis and an authority on suicide in the military.
read more here

Was Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Designed to Fail?
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
February 19, 2014

Veterans and their families have been paying attention and wondering if the military efforts to address wide ranging issues was designed to fail on purpose or not. No one can blame them considering what the result have been while every branch of the military has been pushing the same spiel for years no matter what happened afterwards. The thoughts turned from hope that the military finally understood what the men and women were going thru into thoughts of being pushed into suffering and suicide.

This was the "news" on Valentines Day

Pentagon data provided to Military Times show 296 suicides among active-duty troops and reserve or National Guard members on active duty in 2013, down 15.7 percent from the 2012 total of 351.

It followed the worst year for suicides on record. It also followed what amounted to thousands of servicemen and women dishonorably discharged. According to the AP report, Misconduct Forces More Soldiers Out put together with the report on the number of suicides, it is obvious what the military is doing is not working.

Army 2012 351 2013 296=55 less suicides. 11,000 discharged for "misconduct" in 2013
Navy 2012 59 2013 46=7 less suicides. 3,700 discharged for "misconduct" in 2013
Air Force 2012 59 2013 55=4 less suicides. 2,900 discharged for "misconduct" in 2013
Marines 48-45=3 less suicides. 3,000 discharged for "misconduct" in 2013

Yes, that is a Power Point slide show but it should be called, "powerless point" since no one learned much from it. They actually make fun of it. Take a look at this group among the empty chairs. They are bored.

The military can claim these were all behavioral problems but what they cannot do it prove it. Considering the military does do psychological testing and checks backgrounds, they have also claimed to be addressing problems from substance and sexual abuses, yet they still continue.

Since early 2006 the Substance Abuse Rehabilitation Program (SARP) has been integrated into the Behavioral Services Department. In the case of sexual abuse they have been "addressing" that for many years including this report from what happened in 2009

Department of Defense Fiscal Year 2009 Annual Report on Sexual Assaults in the Military

"In 2005, the Department enacted the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response (SAPR) Program to encourage increased reporting of the crime, facilitate improved access to victim care, better organize response resources, and promote prevention. The Department‘s vision is to enable military readiness by establishing a culture free of sexual assault. The Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO) within the Office of the Secretary of Defense is responsible for the policy that supports this program and oversight activities that ensure its effectiveness. The Department of Defense (DoD) policy requires each Military Service to maintain its own SAPR program, investigate Unrestricted Reports of sexual assaults, and hold subjects appropriately accountable."

Suicides, PTSD, misconduct and everything else going wrong can be summed up in one terrible approach that began in 2008.

Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness (CSF2) is designed to build resilience and enhance performance of the Army Family — Soldiers, their Families, and Army Civilians. CSF2 does this by providing hands-on training and self-development tools so that members of the Army Family are better able to cope with adversity, perform better in stressful situations, and thrive in life.

CSF2 has Training Centers located across the United States. These Training Centers provide Resilience and Performance Enhancement Training where it is needed most – at Army installations (unit level). CSF2 is an integral part of the Army’s Ready and Resilient Campaign ; a campaign that promotes physical and psychological fitness and encourages personal and professional growth. Resilient Soldiers, Family members and Army Civilians perform better, which results in improved unit readiness and better lives.

Nice slogan but not worth more than the lives lost while they continued to push it.

FIVE DIMENSIONS OF STRENGTH but the outcome has been proven to be a failure. It isn't as if no one warned about any of this.

Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, a professor of psychiatry at Boston University

“This report reads more like propaganda than a serious scientific study,” he said in an email after reviewing the Army study results. “The big question, though, has not yet been addressed: Does this intervention make combat soldiers more resilient and prevent PTSD and somatization [a condition in which a person has many physical symptoms but no physical cause that can be detected]?

Anything else we try to do will fail until we can undo the damage done by this.

When we see the outcome spread past the military life and into the lives of our veterans, the whole nation should have screamed instead of just yawning. How could the military push something that experts have been complaining about for years? How could they just ignore the results?

If you want to know how much we knew and how much was spent to produce these deplorable results, read THE WARRIOR SAW, SUICIDES AFTER WAR Everything in this book was complied from news reports along with military documents. Nothing in it was hidden but most of it was forgotten.