Will Ferrell Talladega Nights Cougar used in Army Resilience Training?

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
April 6, 2014

The LA Times reported that just before the Fort Hood shooting there was a class on Resilience Training.

Just over an hour after the class was dismissed, sirens went off across the sprawling military installation. A soldier was on a shooting rampage. Authorities say Spc. Ivan Lopez killed three fellow service members with a handgun and wounded 16 others before shooting himself in the head.

What happens during Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Training?

In the course of the day, the students would practice escaping a wrestling hold while being taunted by fellow soldiers. They would balance a dime on the end of an M16 rifle. They would watch a clip from the movie "Talladega Nights" in which Will Ferrell tries to get into a car with a cougar in the front seat. Such exercises, the Army hopes, will build troops who are not just physically tough but psychologically resilient.

Ok, and the Army thought that a situation from a comedy would equal combat?

Hell if they wanted to use a movie they should have use The Robe since that movie is about a Roman soldier involved in the crucifixion of Christ played by Richard Burton in 1953. That movie is about PTSD and even attempted suicide. Burton played Marcellus a Tribune haunted by the Robe Christ wore as He took His last walk on earth. He had nightmares and flashbacks driving people up the wall with the constant question "Were you there?" It was not until Marcellus found a way to heal his spirit that he was able to live again. Ok a bit twisted because he ended up in the end heading to be put to death because he had become a Christian.

It isn't the first time the government has used stupid examples. Gilgamesh was used as a serious example by the VA-DOD.

Yes, Gilgamesh!

Finally a reporter, Alan Zarembo, decided that this "program" needed to extensive coverage.

The training at Ft. Hood is part of a $50-million-a-year program launched in 2009 to do for the mind what physical fitness does for the body. Known as Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness, it trains 900,000 troops a year in 14 skills aimed at preventing psychological disorders, building resilience and improving performance.

He isn't right on the $50 million a year because it isn't just the Army paying for it but all other branches are using the same type of "training" plus other departments funding other programs and congress dolling out millions more in grants, but at least he is a lot closer than other reporters have been.

The resilience program is based on a field known as positive psychology, which emerged in the 1990s. Unlike clinical psychology, which targets mental illness, it focuses on building strengths and helping people flourish.

The best evidence that psychological resilience can be taught comes from studies involving children. Those who received such training were less likely to develop depression.

Is it money well spent? Hell no! Suicides went up after they started it but as you read in the other article, it didn't take a genius to figure out the harm this would do.

The Army has portrayed the program as a success based on anecdotal reports and internal reviews, which found that soldiers saw small improvements on some measures of psychological health.

But last month, the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine issued a report saying those improvements were not clinically meaningful and that the program had never been properly evaluated. It joined a growing number of critics.

While the rest of the press is coming up with headlines that end up slamming the troops and veterans with PTSD, at least this article takes a good hard look at how it got this bad.