Marines thinking outside of the box on PTSD, Thank God!

When you think that the Marines are supposed to be of a different breed of human, this is an amazing thing! The leadership has finally come to terms with just how human Marines are. Are they tough? Yes. Are they physically tough? Yes. Are they mentally conditioned to do what is asked of them? Yes. What they cannot be trained for is to become machines. They are thinking, feeling, loving humans and nothing can change that. So now the Marines are seeing them as humans much is asked of, but still only human.

Marines are not supposed to grieve.
Marines are supposed to get over it.


No matter what they face, these thoughts have been drilled into their brains. How would these thoughts translate into daily civilian life? Are they supposed to just get over it when someone in their personal life dies? Are they allowed to grieve? When we have natural disasters here and some of their family members are in danger, are they allowed to worry about them? Car accidents happen all the time. Are they allowed to face the same emotional crisis when they are over there and their family member is here? These things the Marines managed to understand. When it is about their military family, the brotherhood of the Marines, they cannot suddenly shut off being human.

Civilians get crisis teams rushing in to help them recover from traumatic events. Thank God the Marines are finally doing the same thing and treating them like humans instead of machines.

Mental health teams embedding to fight stress

By Trista Talton - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Dec 5, 2009 8:56:23 EST

The Marine Corps is sending more mental health teams to the front lines in hopes of better treating an emotionally strained force.

Operational Stress Control and Readiness, or OSCAR, teams will soon be assembled at the battalion and company level, putting mental health support services much closer to combat troops, according to Marine Administrative message 667/09, signed Nov. 23.

These teams include mental health professionals such as Navy psychiatrists and corpsmen trained as psychiatry technicians. They were requested by operational commanders and have served previously as part of a pilot program to train and deploy mental health professionals with Marine regiments and groups. Embedding mental health support down to the company level will make it easier for Marines, especially those leery of seeking help, to get the services they may need, officials said.

Through prevention, early identification and intervention with stress-related problems, OSCAR teams will help “keep Marines and sailors in the fight,” according to the message.

The program creates full-time billets within Marine divisions and infantry regiments, positions that will be filled by psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, mental health clinical nurse practitioners and psychiatric technician corpsmen on loan from naval hospitals.

The teams also will include battalion and company personnel, such as chaplains.

They’ll work with Marines on identifying combat stress and developing techniques to relieve it.
read more here
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2009/12/marines_oscar_120509w/