The Inside Battle: Our Military Mental Health Crisis
In more than a dozen years as a clinician, public speaker, and mental health consultant, licensed psychotherapist Marjorie Morrison has brought an innovative approach to mental health therapy to individual clients and organizations ranging from the San Diego Unified School District and San Diego’s Children’s Hospital to the United States Marine Corps. In 2005, she was offered the opportunity to become a Military Family Life Consultant, and began accepting short-term contracts that took her to Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine bases in the U.S. and abroad. In May 2008 that program placed her at San Diego’s Marine Corps Recruit Depot for a three-month assignment that grew into a yearlong project and kindled both a deep respect for Marines and a determination to improve their mental health services. The successful preventative-counseling program for Drill Instructors she created and implemented at the Recruit Deport has become a model for a proactive approach to military mental health therapy that is now attracting attention and gaining active support in military circles and the U.S. House of Representatives. Marjorie Morrison has a Masters degree in Counseling Psychology, is a California Licensed Marriage Family Therapist (LMFT), a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor (LPC), and holds a Pupil Personnel Services (PPS) credential as both a School Counselor and Psychologist. She divides her time between her overflowing private practice and a burgeoning career as a military mental health consultant and advocate. Marjorie lives in San Diego with her husband and three children.