Military psychology system stressed

WASHINGTON – Many Iraq war soldiers, veterans and their families are not getting needed psychological help because a stressed military’s mental health system is overwhelmed and understaffed, a task force of psychologists found.

The panel’s 67-page report calls for the immediate strengthening of the military mental health system. It cites a 40 percent vacancy rate in active duty psychologists in the Army and Navy, resources diverted from family counselors and a weak transition for veterans leaving the military.

The findings were released Sunday by the American Psychological Association.

More than three out of 10 soldiers met the criteria for a mental disorder, but far less than half of those in need sought help, the report found. Sometimes that’s because of the stigma of having mental health problems, other times the help simply wasn’t available, according to the task force. And there are special difficulties in getting help to National Guard and Reserve troops, who have been used heavily in Iraq, the report said.

The special task force found no evidence of a “well-coordinated or well-disseminated approach to providing behavioral health care to service members and their families.”

The psychology task force, chaired by an active military psychologist and made up of psychologists working for the military or Veterans Administration, said “relatively few high-quality” mental health programs exist in the military now.

“There are tremendous needs; the system is stressed by these needs,” said pediatric psychologist Jeanne Hoffman, a task force member and a civilian pediatric psychologist at Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu.

The Defense Department’s mental health experts hadn’t read the report. Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith said the military is proud of its mental health services record, including a new program this year that checks up on service members after they return home.

“For the past four years, DOD has been aggressively reaching out to support our military personnel before and after deployments. This is unprecedented,” Smith said in an e-mail to the Associated Press.

One of the major problems is that four out of 10 “active duty licensed clinical psychologist” slots in the Army and Navy are not filled, a problem worsened by the dire need to send mental health experts into war zones, the report said.

That vacancy rate has several side effects. One is that the psychologists left are overwhelmed, the report said. It found that one-third of Army mental health personnel reported “high burn out” and 27 percent reported “low motivation for their work.”

At VA headquarters, Antonette Zeiss, deputy chief consultant in the agency’s office of mental health services, said the report “misses the mark by quite a way.” She said her agency didn’t have “an opportunity to present data (to the panel) about what the VA is really doing.”