Stunning Report on Enlistments and Mental Health

by Chaplain Kathie

Waivers do not match the number of discharges so there is a clear problem still going on in the military. While “personality disorder” discharges dropped, it looks like they are still trying to get rid of “problems” instead of taking care of them. We would have to believe that the mental health tests are all flawed to have allowed men and women into the military when they had mental health problems already, training them to use weapons to kill and sending them into combat. This would also mean they didn’t care about the rest of the troops enough to prevent mentally ill recruits from entering into the service.

Troops booted for pre-existing mental issues

By Kelly Kennedy – Staff writer

From 2003 to 2008, more people were separated from the military within their first year of service for “pre-existing” psychiatric conditions than for any other reason, according to a military report.

Those discharges do not qualify a service member for medical benefits or medical retirement pay after leaving.

Twenty-two percent of soldiers who were given “existed prior to service,” or EPTS, discharges had psychiatric conditions, while 42 percent of Marine Corps EPTS discharges fell under that category. The figures for the Navy and Air Force were 24 percent and less than 1 percent, respectively.

Whether the Marine Corps is not screening its new recruits for mental health issues as well as the other services, or whether other factors are at work, is not clear.

“I guess that means the services have knowingly been enlisting and sending to war individuals who have significant mental health disorders,” said Andreas-Georg Pogany, a Colorado-based veterans advocate who has tried to help combat veterans fight military efforts to discharge them for pre-existing mental conditions.

According to the 2010 Accession Medical Standards Analysis & Research Activity Report, the Army approved 1,231 waivers for anxiety, dissociative and somatoform disorders from 2004 until 2009, and another 522 for depressive disorder.

The Marines gave out 766 waivers during the same period for neurotic, mood, somatoform, dissociative or fictitious disorder, and 230 for “disturbance of emotions specific to childhood and adolescence.”

But discharges for pre-existing mental health conditions far exceed recruitment waivers for those conditions. Psychiatric discharges are the top diagnosis for pre-existing discharges for Marines and soldiers. From 2004 to 2009, 4,359 soldiers and 3,636 Marines were discharged during their first year of service for pre-existing psychiatric conditions.
read the rest of the report here
Troops booted for pre-existing mental issues

If you look up the symptoms of PTSD you see that it is an anxiety disorder. This is from National Institute of Mental Health

Anxiety Disorders
What are Anxiety Disorders?
Anxiety is a normal reaction to stress. It helps one deal with a tense situation in the office, study harder for an exam, keep focused on an important speech. In general, it helps one cope. But when anxiety becomes an excessive, irrational dread of everyday situations, it has become a disabling disorder. More about Anxiety Disorders »
Five major types of anxiety disorders are:
Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Panic Disorder
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Social Phobia (or Social Anxiety Disorder)
Treatment
Effective treatments for anxiety disorders are available, and research is yielding new, improved therapies that can help most people with anxiety disorders lead productive, fulfilling lives. More about Treatment »
Getting Help: Locate Services
Locate mental health services in your area, affordable healthcare, NIMH clinical trials, and listings of professionals and organizations. More about Locating Services »
Related Information
Information on coping with traumatic events
Information about medications
Anxiety Disorders Information and Organizations from NLM’s MedlinePlus (en Español)
Some mental illnesses also carry an increased risk for suicide.

PTSD is caused by an outside force and not from within.

What is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, is an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened. Traumatic events that may trigger PTSD include violent personal assaults, natural or human-caused disasters, accidents, or military combat.

Yet while on of the causes of PTSD is combat, the military wants us to believe they did not due proper testing before they allowed the enlistments in the first place.

According to the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center report, adjustment disorder diagnoses rose from 35,774 in 2006 to 51,545 in 2009. Over the same period, anxiety disorder diagnoses rose from 14,140 to 23,609 and PTSD diagnoses rose from 8,416 to 14,193.

Personality disorder diagnoses decreased from 7,459 to 5,020.

What we think about how they operate means less than having to honor the men and women who risk their lives in combat, experience the higher risk of PTSD due to redeployments and will have to live with their lives changed for the rest of their lives. Honoring the men and women serving affected by PTSD will cost them money and they have little interest in doing that when they can get away with just getting rid of the “problem” leaving them with nothing more than a pair of boots and a uniform they cannot wear with pride anymore.