After reading what came with the headline, apparently, they can. It was a report written by Dr. Frank J. Tortorello, Jr. and Dr. William M. Marcellino and only posted by Ricks on The Best Defense.
I read it anyway figuring that it could have something worth reading when I read the authors' backgrounds.
Dr. Frank J. Tortorello, Jr. is a contracted socio-cultural anthropologist who develops and researches foundational issues that impact the Marine Corps's global deployment and war fighting capabilities. Dr. Tortorello focuses on Marine Corps culture and how the Corps replicates its values through training and everyday work. His research examines how Marine Corps culture both enhances and detracts from its ability to deploy globally across the spectrum of missions from conventional warfare to humanitarian relief. He has a special interest in resilience training, defined as managing value conflicts and ethics in warfare, and in the assessment of the impact of cultural training on Marine Corps operations.
Dr. William M. Marcellino is a contracted researcher in sociolinguistics and discourse analysis, who provides research support for the USMC's Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning. His research focus is in resilience and cohesion issues, and he is a former U.S. Marine Corps officer and enlisted. The views presented in this work are the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Defense, the U.S. Government, or ProSol, LLC.
Well at least they did talk about Marines needing to forgive themselves. Not much else was.
In my circle of advocates actually doing the work on a daily basis, we went from being amused by "research" into the military wanting to prescreen size of the Amygdala, Medial Prefrontal Cortex,and Hippocampal Function in PTSD to sort out who they think will get PTSD from those who won't. They didn't seem to be able to understand that PTSD changes the size and it isn't the other way around. Somewhere along the line after reading decades of research, it all turned into being terrified of what was happening and the stunning silence of the media.
We are shocked and saddened by the push still on to block emotional pain instead of healing it. How can we ever really do what is necessary when reporters fail so miserably at discovering what the truth is? PTSD and combat have been studied for over 40 years.
But that wasn't the worst thing I read this morning. This was,
MILITARY SUICIDES ARE UP, DESPITE 900 PREVENTION PROGRAMSThis question is part of the answer
By Bob Brewin
March 21, 2013
The Defense Department runs 900 suicide prevention programs, yet the number of military suicides has more than doubled since 2001, the head of the Pentagon’s suicide prevention office told lawmakers Thursday.
Jacqueline Garrick, acting director of the Defense Suicide Prevention Office, told the House Armed Services Committee that the Pentagon has identified 291 suicides in fiscal 2012 with investigations into another 59 pending. This is up from 160 in 2001. She said the suicide rate for 2012 is expected to increase once death investigations have been completed and a final manner of death determination is issued.
Lt. Gen. Howard Bromberg, Army deputy chief of staff for personnel, said the service had a record number of 324 potential suicides in 2012, more than double the previous record of 148 in 2009. Both Garrick and Bromberg said the military suicide profile matched that of suicides in the general population -- young, white males younger than 30 with only a high school education.
Eliminating the perception that seeking mental health care could cripple a career and lead to loss of a security clearance is one of the most “critical aspects” of suicide reduction, Bromberg told the hearing. He said there should be a top-down emphasis that seeking help is not a sign of weakness.
Rep. Joe Heck, R-Nev., who is also a physician and commands an Army Reserve brigade, said he has personal experience with soldier suicides -- one death and two attempts in his unit. He expressed frustration with the military’s inability to stamp out mental health care’s stigma. Heck noted that when he returned from Iraq in 2008, he asked, “Why are we still developing a stigma reduction campaign?”
Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, D-N.H., wondered if Defense and the services have developed so complex a set of suicide prevention programs that troops “don’t know where to turn when they need help?”
Why? Because we went from no support for Vietnam veterans to the internet with too much support that is not based on science, spirituality or even common sense.
Because of Wounded Times I am contacted by new groups starting up online asking me to promote their site. I used to be happy to do it since I knew this was going to take everyone being involved. That ended after discovering most of the groups had no experts to rely on, lacked accountability and when I monitored the chat exchanges I was horrified.
Servicemen and women, veterans and family members were pouring out their hearts, begging for help but the responses were more about slogans than substance. "God only gives us what we can handle" was repeated on site after site to pleas for help. If a group cannot answer a list of questions, I just ignore them and pray to God that He will send those in need elsewhere.
Back to the 900 "prevention programs" that have failed there is a reason for them failing and it goes back to the neophytes beliefs of training the brain to become mentally tough without understanding what mental toughness was.
This program obliterates centuries of understanding the natural human development, the age of mental/emotional maturity and decades of research into what repeated and prolonged exposures to combat traumas produce. There is very little evidence experts have even been able to distinguish the difference between the causes of traumatic events and the need to curtail treatment accordingly. Too many lump all trauma survivors together instead of understanding they cannot treat someone following a car accident the same way they treat a survivor of rape any more than they can treat them the same way cops and combat veterans are treated. They still fail to show they have learned the type of PTSD inflicting combat veterans and members of law enforcement are different than any other because they are not just survivors and witnesses, they are participants. When their lives are not in danger one moment to the other, they are well aware the next one can come soon.
If a woman is raped by a stranger, she can be suffering from PTSD, yet if she lives with the rapist for years and is abused with the threat of repeated abuse, she will require more help to heal even though both cases were caused by the same type of trauma. There is a difference between traumatic events cause by natural disasters and those caused by other humans. Again, too many fail to address the differences. Too many psychologists are not trained to address trauma so they treat PTSD like any other mental illness.
A friend of mine went to see a VA psychologist with her husband. He is a Navy Veteran and was not deployed into combat but has PTSD. The cause of his PTSD is recovering bodies from the ocean. The psychologist was talking to him about dealing with combat and being in a war zone killing people.
The above report about the hearing in Congress went on to discuss the "Air Force is working with the Rand Corp. research company to determine how social media can help promote the emotional wellbeing of its personnel" yet apparently they didn't bother to read the findings by RAND on resilience training being a "poor fit within the military culture" among other findings.
Congress holds hearings on what they think will get them the most press coverage. Just as the media rule is "if it bleeds it leads" congress is more interested in hearing heartbreaking stories of shattered families instead of hearing from families that have overcome all the hardships OEF and OIF families face and learning what can be done without spending hundreds of millions of dollars on programs that are not working and have not worked in over 5 years.
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