NYT/AP: Military Starts Online Stress Screening

[DeepModem Mom]

Military Starts Online Stress Screening
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: May 30, 2006

NEW YORK (AP) -- Concerned by rising stress levels in the ranks, the Defense Department has quietly started an online self-screening program in hopes that anonymity will help some service members and their spouses overcome reluctance to confront possible mental-health problems.

''It's an excellent tool -- available 24/7 so you can do it at night when nobody's watching,'' said Deborah Manning, who coordinates Army substance-abuse programs at Fort Benning, Ga. ''The anonymity can make a big difference to a soldier who's been trained to think, 'I'm macho. I can handle this.'''

Air Force Col. Joyce Adkins, a psychologist at the Pentagon's Health Affairs office, said several thousand people have used the Mental Health Self-Assessment Program since it went online four months ago. The program assesses answers to questions about recent behavior and mood swings. If the responses indicate possible trouble, it suggests options for seeking help.

The effort is among the latest of numerous military initiatives undertaken to cope with stress, depression and other mental-health problems that have proliferated since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan led to tougher overseas deployment schedules.

The Army, for example, has assigned combat stress teams to units in Iraq following an increase in suicides among soldiers there. Service members returning from Iraq have been required to complete a survey used to decide who might need further psychological help; a recent Pentagon study found that a third of them received counseling....

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Military-Mental-Health.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[tridim]

1. If you score a 1% you're okay for battle.

If you score 50% you're okay for battle.
If you score 100% you're okay for battle.

What the hell good will this do?

[noel adamson]

2. Day Late and a Dollar Short

It's not like they didn't know about stress or that they never correlated the most severe cases of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) with length of time in combat more than any other factor and it doesn't seem likely that an on line test will do anything but fall short of saving lives either outright or in terms of life with mental damage.

Better than a yellow ribbon I suppose.