Military Mental Health Exams Fail

Military Mental Health Exams Fail
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
March 5, 2014

When Military Brass talks about how most of the suicides in the military had nothing to do with deployments, that should have sent a huge red flare up regarding mental health screenings. After all, if they were suffering so much they wanted to die, mental health evaluations should have discovered it. Right? After all, they should care about the mental health state of those they hand weapons to as much as they care about the soldiers serving next to them. At least that is what is we assume.

Either the military is trying to cover up for the fact suicides went up after they spent billions on preventing them or they are still trying to blame the soldiers.

This may have seemed like a new story, "Nearly 1 in 5 had mental illness before enlisting in Army, study says The study raises questions about the military's screening of recruits. Another study looks at rising suicide rates among soldiers." As it is, it is a warning that the mental health screenings done by the military are inadequate. What makes it worse is the simple fact that none of this is new.

"The results of this study provide strong evidence that relying on self-report alone may be insufficient policy for screening for disqualifying or significant mental health conditions," wrote Army Maj. Remington L. Nevin, the study's author.

But the report found that military health officials relied heavily on those self-reported answers, with soldiers rarely referred for a professional evaluation if they failed to acknowledge seeking mental health care.

At least 230 service members have committed suicide in Iraq and Afghanistan since the U.S. launched the first offensive eight years ago this month. As the wars continue, the study said, valid information on mental health is particularly important as the military faces challenges maintaining troop strength.

Matthew Kauffman of the Courant reported that in 2009 along with this,

The Pentagon maintains detailed electronic health information on all service members. The study released last week marked the first time military officials matched the answers on the pre-deployment form to actual medical records.

The study looked at a sample of more than 11,000 troops deployed to Afghanistan in 2007 and found that 4.2 percent had been formally diagnosed in the previous year with a serious mental health disorder. But of those, only 48 percent answered "yes" to the question: "During the past year, have you sought care or counseling for your mental health?"

How do they explain the simple fact that this is all happening after they started addressing mental health and suicides? How do they account for the fact that the Army had over 11,000 misconduct discharges last year but the drop in suicides did not reflect enough of a drop to account for them? Then they would have to explain the number of enlisted personnel also gong down with less deployed into Afghanistan.

So much they have to account for but no one is making sure they answer for what has happened.