Pre and post deployment support

[reed11b]

SEC Gates released guidance this year that for Security Clearance Applications and Investigations, the question covering seeking mental health or counselling will be amended to exclude combat deployment related issues.

They are trying to encourage people to get help, and not hide issues which only makes them worse. Unless the medical issues are so great that the Soldier cannot function, commits violent acts, or abuses alcohol/drugs, it should not come up in his/her security check. If the Soldier is doing those things, he/she needs help.

True, and hats of to SEC Gates for having the courage to do the single thing that would have the greatest effect on MH stigma. However this is going to take time to filter down from the top, and for soldiers, a closed minded or uninformed chain of command is often the greater immediate threat from a MH diagnosis.
To step back to Stan for a minute, you actually made an extremely valid point that I failed to address on my first response, what exactly DOES happen to a soldier diagnosed w/ PTSD? There is no one answer and it is very chain of command driven. I have seen soldiers that were a train wreck that the chain of command denied counseling for because they were afraid to lose the soldier and soldiers that certainly had some degree of PTSD that commanders refused to allow to have counseling because they were afraid that it would prevent there ability to discipline and rehabilitate the soldier. On top of this Army civilian MH providers vary greatly in quality. Some are fantastic, unfortunately my personnel experience is that most are not. I have seen them belittle patients, mis-diagnose, over-diagnose, over-medicate and show greater allegiance to the process then the client. Same goes for many VA clinicians. I have also seen superb chain of commands that have made referrals when appropriate and dealt with less then clinical challenges in-house very effectively.
My focus is PTSD awareness training for first-line leaders to help them differentiate between MH and disciplinary issues and stress self-help skills for the individual soldiers and families. Army chain of commands seem to universally care about there troops, so I feel this will help reduce a lot of the chain of command errors I have seen. It's a start anyway.
Reed