The Pentagon has issued a directive that intensifies the role of mental health providers in combat zones, a move that boosts the preventive care psychologists are able to provide in the world's military hot zones, where today's stressors are less likely to be caused by violence and casualties than by environmental stressors such as the weather, terrain and living conditions. Meanwhile, the Air Force has assigned 35 psychologists to its Mental Health Rapid Response teams. Some of these units are helping service members deal with the chaotic environments they face overseas in places like Bosnia and Kosovo, where mud and rain can cause unsanitary conditions that provoke anxiety, and the sights of extreme poverty can cause stress. The directive calls for mental health professionals to deliver services on the front lines with physicians. The mental health units typically have a psychologist, social worker and several mental health technicians.
Some units have a psychiatrist, psychiatric nurses and occupational therapists.
It allows psychologists to treat more than tertiary symptoms of combat stress reactions and provides a mandate for psychologists to develop and implement buddy and unit supports and organization configurations to prevent the occurrence of such stress reactions. Of course, the greatest benefit is to military personnel, says Lt. Col. Kevin P. Mulligan, PsyD, chief consultant to the Air Force Surgeon General for clinical psychology. Frontline treatment Under the directive, service members are treated for combat stress as close to the operational front as possible instead of being evacuated to a military base in Europe or back to the United States. But, if we evacuate them away from their unit, their psychiatric symptoms tend to last. Treatment is usually less than 72 hours.