MI soldiers forced into combat

[Cerberus]

Out. Fucking. Rageous. News article

[AirMarshall]

- Every soldier who needs treatment should recieve it!

That said, this article is like a goulash random factoids, statements and half truths.

Suicides: Numbers were published within the last month. Suicides in Iraq are up, but overall the Army suicide rate has not changed significantly in the last five years, it is around 49, if I recall right.

Advocacy Group: This idiot woman is saying that SSRI medicines are ticking time bombs that make people suicidal and homicidal. bullshit.

Doctors and soldier deployment: A commander may own the soldier, but doctors have their own chain of command, and the power to declare soldiers unfit for duties. A doctor wouldn't let a soldier deploy with a leaking aneurism, right? Same thing applies to MI...are the doctors being responsible enough to stand up for the soldiers?

There is fascinating body of work accumulated since WWII, that shows that by 'medicalizing" a stressful incident or general stress of a soldier you can actually create PTSD, where he would have otherwise recovered normally with some rest and counseling. In essence by implanting the idea that the soldier is severely ill enough to require evacuation and hospitalization, the expectation that he is now disabled is set. It has been shown that less severe cases can often be given a short break from the line, some meds, and then returned to their unit, where they are back with comrades. BTW, it was found that the Navy had fairly low rates of PTSD or MI due to the close friendships and support that they have aboard ship even after ship fires and sinkings.

Lets hope that the doctors have the guts to do the right thing.

a.m.

[LunaRufina]

"The challenge for us ... is that the Army has a mission to fight. And, as you know, recruiting has been a challenge," she said. "And so we have to weigh the needs of the Army, the needs of the mission, with the soldiers' personal needs."

Ritchie insisted the military works hard to prevent suicides, but it is a challenge because every soldier has access to a weapon.

"I'm concerned that people who are symptomatic are being sent back. That has not happened before in our country," said Arthur S. Blank Jr., a Yale-trained psychiatrist who helped get post-traumatic stress disorder recognized as a diagnosis after the Vietnam War.

Maj. Andrew Efaw, a judge advocate general officer in the Army Reserves who handled trial defenses for soldiers in northern Iraq last year, said commanders don't want to send mentally ill soldiers into combat.

"But on the other hand, [the com mender]doesn't want to send a message to his troops that if you act up, he's willing to send you home," Efaw said.

If "The Army" [those who share the Recruit or Bust point of view] actually cared or cared to be educated, they would not be deploying these people. It is not the responsibility of the Army, as a collective entitity, to prevent suicides. By its own policies, suicide prevention should not be a subject that the Army is actively working on.

I would assume that the needs of the army are to have healthy, functioning, cognitively aware soldiers. With PTSD and many other mental illnesses, if you are in that sort of environment, these factors can not be counted on. This ultimately puts that soldier and every single soldier around them at higher risk.

Keeping someone active because you don't approve of their behavior certainly sends a message to your troops. And maybe that is why commanders feel it is now a necessity to educate themselves in "suicide prevention". It is beyond irresponsible to do this. It's immoral.

Out. Fucking. Rageous.

Absolutely Cerberus.

I have a friend who was in the Navy and eventually discharged. But he shouldn't have been allowed to join in the first place. I actually speak from that point of view and the responses. I don't doubt that many will take it upon themselves to decide that someone is fit for duty without consulting someone else. It happens in everyday life, without the pressures of having "a mission to fight" and low recruitment.

~navy~

[wifezilla]

When my husband joned the army, he outright lied on his paperwork. He had been hospitalized twice already for bp...but I am not sure he paid any attention to the actual dx.

[null0trooper]

BTW, it was found that the Navy had fairly low rates of PTSD or MI due to the close friendships and support that they have aboard ship even after ship fires and sinkings.

IIRC, being onbaord a ship that is sunk automatically qualifies for 30 days shore leave. That may be an

urban legend, as it's one of the many things I've never wanted to learn about first-hand.

A serious fire aboard ship, with or without sinking, now THAT would be a fucking nightmare. Think about

it - where are you going to go to get away from it if it gets out of control?

[AirMarshall]

Samuel Johnson writer from about 300 years ago said that being on a ship was like 'Being in jail with the chance of drowning".

a.m.

[Sam]

I found this to be terrifying:

"I can't imagine something more irresponsible than putting a soldier suffering from stress on (antidepressants), when you know these drugs can cause people to become suicidal and homicidal," said Vera Sharav, president of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, a New York-based advocacy group. "You're creating chemically activated time bombs.""

However, I researched Ms Sharav and found that she is coming from a totally emotional place and has no formal education on which to base this conclusion.

I found this site-http://www.gnn.tv/A01598-which sheds some light on why she would make such a claim.

"The article (

[Cerberus]

Doctors and soldier deployment: A commander may own the soldier, but doctors have their own chain of command, and the power to declare soldiers unfit for duties. A doctor wouldn't let a soldier deploy with a leaking aneurism, right? Same thing applies to MI...are the doctors being responsible enough to stand up for the soldiers?

Lets hope that the doctors have the guts to do the right thing.

Hope in one hand and spit in the other and see which you get first.

Doctors they may be, but they're military personnel regardless, and I'm not about to believe that more than a handful are willing throw up obstacles when orders come down from the top brass. "Unfit" is a very flexible term, especially when recruitment is down. I suspect that if Custer could have had some more men at Little Bighorn he wouldn't have been very picky about how fit they were.

The military is not an ethics think-tank. It's an organized killing machine, and its members are systematically trained to take human life. The well-being of an individual soldier is of concern solely in the context of his ability to further the current mission. Soldiers are, by definition, expendable in the mind of the military. If they weren't expendable, they wouldn't be sent out to places where they stand a fair likelihood - and sometimes even probability - of being slaughtered. But even for such an institutional mindset, sending a good man who, because of his PTSD, now turns into a cringing ball of anxiety at every loud noise back to a battlefield is cruelty, plain and simple. Cruelty in the name of numbers.

And this business about 'medicalizing' a stressful incident - this sounds an awful lot like blaming the victim. Go find a man who reflexively hits the ground whenever he hears a loud noise and tell him he wouldn't be like that if he hadn't been told about PTSD. Who wrote all these studies? No, wait... let me guess. The military?

Cerberus (who would have made a pitiful excuse for a soldier even before he swore never to use a gun for anything)