Search

During the Second World War, controversy surrounded not the inevitability of psychiatric casualties but the extent to which they could be minimized by selection, training, morale, and leadership. By early 1944, when planning for the D-Day landings was advanced, the problem of the psychiatric battle casualty was considered manageable by careful preparation and clinical understanding. The campaign to liberate Europe offered the newly formed Directorate of Army Psychiatry an opportunity to demonstrate its effectiveness. Psychiatric services were deployed to Normandy to maximize the return of front-line troops to duty. Commanders, however, entertained doubts about the value of military psychiatrists. By offering a sanctioned escape route from battle, some believed that their mere presence undermined the fighting spirit of combat troops. The records of 32 General (Psychiatric) Hospital have been analysed to discover categories of troops most vulnerable to breakdown and to assess the impact of front-line treatments. Infantry soldiers, those most likely to be killed, were disproportionately represented amongst admissions. Senior non-commissioned officers were also at elevated risk of breakdown, some being war weary from earlier campaigns. Probably 36 per cent of admissions returned to combatant duty, and 53 per cent were evacuated to the UK. The scale of psychiatric casualties revealed failures in pre-deployment screening. doi:10.1017/S0018246X09990495

Media coverage highlighting service delivery problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center has led to heightened public scrutiny and congressional oversight regarding the care provided to returning Operation Enduring Freedom [...], This article discusses social work practice areas for civilian social workers who provide services to military service members, veterans, and their families. These practice areas include education, child welfare, domestic violence, mental health, health care, substance abuse, and criminal justice. The authors examine the impact of the contemporary military lifestyle and current military operations on service members and their families in the context of these practice areas, with the goal of compelling civilian social workers to acknowledge their responsibility to competently serve military and veteran clients. KEY WORDS: deployment cycle; mental health; military; social work; veterans

JANICE GROSS STEIN explores strategies of reassurance than can contribute to the prevention of the use of force among adversaries. The assesses their strengths and weaknesses and identifies the conditions under which strategies of reassurance can complement or supplement the threats that underlie deterrence.

Survey data from near 500 civilian wives of soldiers from who deployed to Somalia for Operation Restore Hope were analyzed to determine how the mechanics of soldier-family communications affected spouse adaptation to the stresses of the deployment. Difficulty communicating with the soldier (particularly 'connecting for the first time') was one of the most frequent problems that spouses experienced. This difficulty was more strongly related to the characteristics of the soldiers' units (i.e., type and location within Somalia) than to the characteristics of the soldiers themselves. Problems communicating during the deployment not only predicted the level of spouse stress during the deployment, but also affected either directly or through 'spouse stress' several outcomes that are important to Army planners. Those outcomes included: (1) spouse support for the soldier remaining in the Army, (2) the soldiers reenlistment intention, (3) spouse support for peacekeeping missions, and (4) family adaptation to Army life., 'Boredom, even in combat situations, has long been recognized as a source of stress among soldiers.(1) Contact with home, most commonly through the mail, has been a major means of [...]