And what happens, is they are being faced by the threat of annihilation, and if they lose confidence in that situation, they have to deal with death as the very real threat to life. And whenever we have to deal with a real threat of death, we become extremely traumatized by what happens around us. It is absolutely vital. Breakdown of leadership has shown, or has been shown in the literature, to have taken a regiment or a unit that was excellent and that had been heroic in the field and turned them into a couple of people that couldn't even get themselves out of mild trouble. Given the fact, though, that peacekeeping is likely to repeat itself in ways we have seen been in the past, you can't be very optimistic about the ability of a program like this to prepare people for future missions though.
Education is an important part of it.
But the most important factor that has been shown to prevent combat stress reaction from developing is leadership, and the confidence that soldiers have in their leadership and the cohesion within the unit. And the one thing that has been shown that should not happen is units should not break up at all. Dr. Gouws, thanks very much. You're very welcome.