Army surgeon general says mental health services 'not adequate'

More than 28,000 soldiers suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder

27 May 2008 // The number of Army troops suffering from severe combat stress is skyrocketing, rising from just over 1,000 new cases in 2003 to more than 28,000 soldiers today diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, the Army surgeon general said today.

Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker, the Army's top medical officer, said that he does not know how many additional soldiers suffer from lesser symptoms of combat stress, such as hyper-vigilance, sleeplessness and irrational anger, and does not know how many of these soldiers are receiving treatment.

Schoomaker also said that the Army has inadequate facilities and too few mental health care providers.

"As a nation, our mental health capability is not adequate to the need," and the Army suffers from the same problem, Schoomaker told defense reporters this morning. He said the Army recognizes it needs 300 more top mental health professionals to care for the growing numbers of soldiers suffering from severe stress. It has filled only 180 of those positions, he said.

Mental health assessments conducted in Afghanistan and Iraq annually for the past few years have found that between 12 percent and 15 percent of soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan are taking some form of medication for stress, including drugs to control anxiety or depression and for sleeplessness. Some of these soldiers have been treated for combat stress and deployed again into combat, he said, if they have been treated successfully and are deemed capable of performing their missions.

Schoomaker said the Army is seeking to impress upon soldiers and their families that emotional reactions to stress are normal and should be expected and that stress is treatable if identified early. Although the Army has recently begun requiring mental health assessments for soldiers six months after they return from a combat deployment to catch late-developing symptoms of stress, the Army relies on spouses and other family members to be alert to soldiers who are not adapting well to "normal" life.

"We are in our infancy right now in knowing the extent" of the number of soldiers who are suffering from stress, Schoomaker said.

Based on the its studies in the field, the Army expects that as many as 30 percent of soldiers will return from Iraq or Afghanistan with some symptoms of combat stress.

Currently, there are about 155,000 troops in Iraq, including Army, Marine Corps, Air Force and Navy personnel, and some 33,000 in Afghanistan.

Army data show that in 2006, about 4,000 soldiers were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. During 2007, when the Bush administration ordered a "surge" of about 28,000 troops to Iraq, 10,049 new cases of PTSD were diagnosed.

In total, the Army was treating about 4,800 soldiers for PTSD in 2004, 11,400 soldiers in 2005, 18,315 soldiers in 2006 and 28,364 last year, according to the data Schoomaker released today.