Psyche, Science, and Society

Reader story about Army mental health treatment

November 30th, 2005

In response to my To heal or to patch? Military mental health workers in Iraq, a reader, Christopher Bradley, has sent me the following story:

In the late 80s, early 90s I was friends, and for a while a roommate, with a mental health counselor with the 7th Light Infantry Division, then at Fort Ord outside of Monterey, California. He was very up front in conversations with me that the function of a mental health counselor in the Army was not to help the client but to return them to their unit as swiftly as possible and up front that this was the official policy of his unit, and the Army generally in regards to mental health. This NCO was aware of the moral quandaries of his job, but felt powerless to do anything about them. He was, after all, only a sergeant. (At the time, I accepted this reasoning. I have grown more morally nuanced since then in many areas.)

An officer in his unit, Captain Christopher C** [name deleted], was getting his Ph.D in psychology sponsored by the military, because he was doing studies about increasing aggression in young men! He laughed about it and did not seem to see the depravity of that position.

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