Army examining mental health programs

DONNA CASSATA

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — The Army inspec­tor gen­eral is con­duct­ing a system-wide review of men­tal health facil­i­ties to deter­mine whether psy­chi­a­trists over­turned diag­noses of post-traumatic stress dis­or­der to save money, a move that comes as the case of a U.S. sol­dier sus­pected of killing 16 Afghan civil­ians has brought fresh atten­tion to the strains of war.

Army Sec­re­tary John McHugh told Con­gress on Wednes­day that the ser­vice is try­ing to deter­mine whether the change in diag­no­sis was iso­lated or a com­mon prac­tice. Sen. Patty Mur­ray, D-Wash., who pressed McHugh at a com­mit­tee hear­ing, said the foren­sic psy­chi­a­try unit at Madi­gan Army Med­ical Cen­ter on Joint Base Lewis-McChord is being inves­ti­gated for revers­ing diag­noses based on the expense of pro­vid­ing care and ben­e­fits to mem­bers of the military.

“Not only is it dam­ag­ing for our sol­diers, but it also really fur­thers the stigma for oth­ers that are — whether they’re decid­ing to seek help or not today,” Mur­ray said.

Since 2007, more than 40 per­cent of the cases involv­ing can­di­dates for retire­ment had been over­turned, accord­ing to sta­tis­tics cited by Mur­ray. Of the 1,680 patients screened at Madi­gan, more than 690 had been diag­nosed with post-traumatic stress dis­or­der. The psy­chi­atric team reversed more than 290 of those diagnoses.

“The sur­geon gen­eral (Lt. Gen. Patri­cia Horoho) has asked the inspec­tor gen­eral of the Army to go and exam­ine all of the sim­i­lar facil­i­ties and loca­tions,” McHugh told Mur­ray and mem­bers of the Sen­ate Appro­pri­a­tions defense sub­com­mit­tee. “To this point, we don’t see any evi­dence of this being sys­temic. But as you and I have dis­cussed, we want to make sure that where this was inap­pro­pri­ate, it was an iso­lated case, and if it were not, to make sure we address it as holis­ti­cally as we’re try­ing to address it at Madigan.”

What Mur­ray referred to as the “invis­i­ble wounds of war” have moved to the fore­front of the national debate after a shoot­ing spree ear­lier this month in two Afghan vil­lages that left women and chil­dren dead. A sus­pect in the case, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, 38, is being held in Fort Leav­en­worth, Kan., while a mil­i­tary inves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ues. Bales, who enlisted in the mil­i­tary after the Sept. 11 ter­ror­ist attacks, did four tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, accord­ing to court records and interviews.

“We have in the mil­i­tary writ large over 50,000 folks in uni­form who have had at least four deploy­ments,” McHugh said.

Bales was assigned to the 2nd Bat­tal­ion, 3rd Infantry Reg­i­ment of the 3rd Stryker Brigade Com­bat Team, of the 2nd Infantry Divi­sion, which is based at Lewis-McChord. Whether Bales sought treat­ment at Madi­gan is unknown.

Army offi­cials said they are com­mit­ted to strength­en­ing the psy­cho­log­i­cal resilience of its troops and lead­er­ship is tak­ing delib­er­ate steps to ensure help is avail­able to sol­diers and fam­i­lies deal­ing with PTSD and other psy­cho­log­i­cal effects of war.

Army offi­cials say sol­diers sent to war may be checked up to five times, includ­ing before being deployed, dur­ing com­bat, once they return home and six months and a year later. Every sol­dier return­ing from deploy­ment com­pletes what the Army calls a Post Deploy­ment Health Assess­ment and a face-to-face inter­view with a men­tal health pro­fes­sional. The Army screens sol­diers for depres­sion and PTSD, ask­ing ques­tions to find out about any social stres­sors, sleep dis­rup­tion and other prob­lems. Those who are detected as hav­ing prob­lems go on to a sec­ond phase of screening.

Offi­cials say, how­ever, that no test is con­sid­ered diag­nos­ti­cally defin­i­tive for men­tal ill­ness in gen­eral or PTSD in particular.

More than 134,900 Army per­son­nel were diag­nosed with trau­matic brain injuries between 2000 and 2011. Of those, 75 per­cent or more than 100,000 were diag­nosed as hav­ing a mild or reg­u­lar con­cus­sion. Army pol­icy calls for every ser­vice mem­ber involved in a blast, vehi­cle crash or a blow to the head to be med­ically evaluated.

Asked specif­i­cally about the Bales’ case, McHugh said he was con­fi­dent in the mil­i­tary jus­tice system.

Posted by AP News on Mar 21 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.