In print | Published March 26, 2009

Swarthmore students and faculty gathered in collection organized by SDS and the President’s Office last Friday to mark the sixth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Some of the questions raised at the Collection centered around strategies for protesting the war and assuaging its devastating impact on Iraqi society. Although a discussion of the war’s legitimacy and the damage it has caused is certainly valuable, we believe that it is time to shift the discussion — at this late stage in the conflict — from the causes and course of the war to its long-term consequences. Of particular concern is the war’s impact on the psychological health of the soldiers who waged it.

As military personnel are reintegrated into civilian society, it is imperative that Congress honors the sacrifices they have made by ensuring adequate funding for the mental health care of veterans.

Although it is hard to imagine anyone seriously opposing mental health care for U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq, the current mental health treatment for soldiers is woefully inadequate, and it is unclear whether or not Obama’s Budget for Veterans Affairs, which is set to come out mid-April, will sufficiently address the current system’s shameful inadequacies.

Testifying in Congress earlier in March, Brigadier General Loree Sutton, director of the Defense Center of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury, said that the Military had “come a long way since just over a year ago,” when Congress gave her organization $900 million dollars to conduct research and implement structural changes to the military’s mental health system. Sutton’s optimism, however, may be a little misplaced. Suicide rates in the military continue to spiral upwards, as 20 percent of soldiers screen positive for post-traumatic stress disorder before re-deployment and divorce rates among active-duty soldiers continue to climb.

There is only so much Obama can do. Military culture still places a stigma on mental illness, and despite a growing chorus of military men and women who have begun to speak publicly about PTSD, military culture has only begun to adapt. Army Secretary Pete Geren said, “Stigma [about mental illness] is a challenge. It’s certainly a challenge in the culture of the Army, where we have a premium on strength, physically, mentally, emotionally.” Army Major General David Blackledge agreed that soldiers had to be trained to discuss their mental health issues. “It’s part of our profession…nobody wants to admit that they’ve got a weakness…We’ve got to talk about it,” Blackledge said.

They have to talk about it in Congress as well. Despite doubling the amount of money going to treat mental illness in the military since 2001, statistics compiled by the military show that in certain ways, the military has gotten less effective at treating mental illness in the ranks. The ratio of “behavior health workers” to troops in Iraq nearly doubled between the years 2004 to 2007, and a recent report by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans for America demonstrates that only one third of Marines who were diagnosed with PTSD in America had their treatment continue when they returned to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Because so many soldiers have not received treatment abroad, it is imperative that there is enough funding to allow them to receive treatment when they return. The military has drawn up a variety of strategies that it says will increase its ability to treat veterans. These strategies include opening a suicide hotline, hiring thousands of new mental health workers and screening all veterans who seek treatment at Veteran Hospitals for a range of mental illnesses.

These programs need funding. Obama recently pledged to expand federal funding to Veterans Affairs by $25 billion over the next five years. Student activists should ensure that Obama sticks to this pledge, and that Obama funnels a higher percentage of this money into programs designed to ensure our soldiers’ psychological well being.

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