For every thousand active-duty military personnel, one active-duty mental health professional is available. According to Terry Jones, a Pentagon health spokesman, among the nation’s 1.4 million active-duty military personnel there are only 1,431 health professionals.
America’s armed forces and veterans are having a more difficult time than ever dealing with suicide, depression, marital, family, and job problems. This problem is so large scale that it competes with the aftermath of Vietnam. The government is doing everything they can do as far as hiring and recruiting health care professionals goes, including pleading with incentives and borrowing professionals from other agencies. The efforts of the government are not quite enough, however, to halt a shortage of this stature.
Retired Army Brig. Gen. Stephen Xenakis, a psychiatrist, said of the efforts: “Honestly, much is being done by the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs, but the need to help these men and women goes far beyond whatever any government agency can do.”
Even with the addition of the 20,000 health care professionals providing services to the Pentagon and the Veterans Administration ““ the psychiatrists, psychologists, psychiatric nurses, substance abuse counselors, and social workers ““ the need for help and the lack of enough is still glaring.
Of those who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, about 300,000 are estimated to have post-traumatic stress or anxiety. But the numbers don’t stop there. Children who have been without their parents over long periods and spouses left home alone to manage families without their partners are also in dire need to help ““ elevating the number to over one million with problems.
According to the Veterans Administration, 120,000 military personnel with mental health problems from Afghanistan and Iraq have been seen. Rates are high for the two wars, but a majority of the 400,000 patients seen by the Veterans Administration last year were Vietnam veterans.
According to Barbara V. Romberg, a clinical psychologist practicing in Washington who founded the volunteer group called Give an Hour there are over 400,000 mental health professionals in our country, so “Clearly, we have the resources to meet this challenge.
The shortage of help has caused 1200 private counselors to offer an hour a week of free services to troops returning with mental health problems from Afghanistan and Iraq through Romberg’s Give an Hour. These volunteers, such as psychologist Brenna Chirby who owns a private practice in Virginia, are happy to give. Chirby remarks that it is not much to ask, quipping, “How can you not give that to these men and women that … are going oversees and fighting for us?”
Even with the 1200 volunteers committed to helping for a year, the numbers are staggering.
According to Romberg, her group, the largest of the help-groups across the nation, is still too small. She hopes to find 40,000 volunteers over the next three years ““ which would only be a measly 10 percent of the country’s health care professionals.
Other groups are also bringing in volunteers. San Francisco’s Coming Home Project has several dozen volunteers which range from interfaith leaders to psychotherapists to veterans and offers anything from stress management and yoga classes to retreats and workshops as well as counseling.
Another group, the Soldiers Project, started by psychiatrists at the Ernest S. Lawrence Trauma Center of the Los Angeles Institute and Society of Psychoanalytic Studies and operating in New York, Seattle, and Chicago, has almost 200 volunteers.
At a recent news conference announcing the Lilly Foundation’s donation of one million dollars to get the word out to those who need help, Xenakis said, “Thousands of therapists across the country are donating their time to give vital treatment and support to our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, veterans and families. These young men and women volunteered to defend our nation, and now our nation can volunteer to serve them.”
Terry Jones, a Pentagon spokesman on health issues is a believer that there might be an important place for these groups. “While the military health system does not endorse volunteer health care organizations, we recognize that groups such as this one offer more options for our warriors and their families,” Jones said. “If these mental health caregivers are willing to give and learn about our warriors, they may be more willing to become TRICARE providers.” TRICARE is a network of 300,000 specialists, physicians, and pharmacies which support the department’s military medical corps and facilities.
In Jones’ words there are, in addition to the 1,431 mental health professionals in uniform, 3,000 mental health professionals available under TRICARE. The services are attempting to hire around 575 more, and according to Jones, about 200 mental health officers will be temporarily sent to the Pentagon to work in military facilities. The arrangement should be finalized in a few weeks.
This military health care system serves somewhere around 9.2 million people; some are reserves, some active, and some are families and retirees. Staffing has been an issue, but not the only one. The military culture has an established stigma in regards to seeking help. Many fear that seeking help will harm their military career.
The military health care system continues to try to make health care more accessible, offering suicide prevention training, training on how to recognize mental problems, assessing mental health with screenings prior to and following deployments, sending health teams to the front to boost and measure morale, creating programs to help with housing and child care, and teaching families about common problems to expect at home during readjusting periods.
Emotional problems are a normal reaction to war, but needs in these areas have not been fully met.
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