Pentagon says more funds needed for mental health
The U.S. military’s mental health system fails to meet the needs of troops and is too short of funds and staff to help service members sent to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon said on Friday.
Repeated and extended deployments to those war zones over the past five years have driven the need for mental health services higher, but resources have not climbed in response, members of a Defense Department task force said.
"We concentrate a great deal on physical health; that is how fast can you run a mile, how many sit-ups and push-ups can you do,” said Vice Adm. Donald Arthur, who co-chaired the task force. “But we don’t often concentrate on the psychological health of the service member.
“Anyone who goes into combat knows that you become significantly affected by the experience, and post-traumatic stress reactions are normal. We would like to not have those reactions go on to be disorders,” Arthur said.
The task force, after a one-year study, said Congress should increase funding for mental health services, including money for more mental health professionals, so the military can treat post-traumatic stress early.
But it did not estimate how much would be needed to address the shortfalls identified in the mental health system.
Ward Casscells, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, also did not say how much the Pentagon thinks it needs. But he said the $900 million for post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury approved by Congress as part of the emergency war funds bill was only a start.
“I’ve got to find some funds for this,” Casscells said after the task force presented its recommendations.
He also said the 200 mental health professionals the Army plans to hire was a “good round number” but that it may be an underestimation.
The army says it currently employs 600 to 800 such professionals, including civilians and contractors.
COMBAT STRESS
More than 1 million service members have been deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. Of those, nearly 450,000 have been deployed more than once.
“Both of those venues - the repeat deployments and the increased combat exposure - move them toward the potential of exhibiting symptoms of post-traumatic stress,” said Maj. Gen. Gale Pollock, the Army’s acting surgeon general.
Service members in the National Guard, a reserve force that has been severely stressed by deployments to Iraq, report more psychological symptoms than soldiers and Marines, the report found.
Arthur said he did not know why but that it may be related to training.
“Why it is different in different groups, I’m not exactly sure,” he said. “There’s a lot that has to do with the intensity of resilience training prior to going into combat.”
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