U.S. MILITARY Families, experts question support services

In 10 months, two dozen soldiers committed suicide during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
DAYTON (AP) -- Families, veterans advocates and mental health experts question whether the military has done enough to support soldiers before their tour of duty, during combat and after they've come home -- when some have committed suicide.
A Dayton Daily News examination of news reports and information from veterans' advocate groups helped the newspaper compile a list of 21 servicemen who committed suicide after returning home from serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom or Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.
The actual number of suicide victims could be higher because the military does not officially collect data on suicides among returning soldiers, the Daily News said in a story Sunday.
However, some question whether the suicides could have been prevented.
"The families were never counseled as to what they should be doing to support them," said Karen Payne, whose 23-year-old son, Army Spc. David Payne of Norman, Okla., fatally shot himself after his second tour of duty in Iraq.
Several studies sponsored by Congress and the Army say the Pentagon failed to prepare for the psychological toll on servicemen returning from combat.
"It's clear that the Department of Defense was not prepared to meet the mental health needs of soldiers," said Steve Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center, an advocacy group for veterans.
Statistics
At least 24 soldiers killed themselves during Operation Iraqi Freedom from January 2003 to October 2003 -- a rate of 21.2 per 100,000, or nearly double the 2002 rate for all Army personnel.
The suicide rate for soldiers in Iraq was roughly double the 10.7 national rate for all Americans.
Army spokeswoman Martha Rudd said the Army responded "quickly and thoroughly" to the surge in suicides last summer, sending a team of consultants to Iraq and Kuwait in July to study the problem and then adopting most of the team's recommendations.
Those included appointing a theater of operations mental health consultant, providing behavioral services to soldiers closer to their fighting units and improving the mental health care for those being evacuated out of the war zone, Rudd said.
A new Army organization, the Deployment Cycle Support System, now coordinates mental health and wellness programs for soldiers and their families "from pre-deployment, to deployment, to post-deployment and then re-deployment," Rudd said.
Since the changes, the rate of soldier suicides in Iraq and Kuwait has dropped to two per month this year, Rudd said.
Not enough
Robinson said the programs still aren't enough. More than 5,000 veterans of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan have been diagnosed with a mental health problem, according to an internal document prepared by the Veterans Administration to help plan for the newest war veterans.
"While these programs are meaningful attempts to address the problem, there are still more soldiers who need help than are being reached," he said. "If you don't get face-to-face contact between veterans and mental health professionals with experience in treating wartime trauma, soldiers will fall through the cracks."
Mary Tendall, a California psychotherapist who specializes in treating post-traumatic stress disorder for the VA, said soldiers who have spent prolonged periods in combat develop a "lock and load" mentality for years after their return.
"Their whole existence is coming from that primitive, reptilianlike place of survival within the brain -- it's flight, fight or freeze," Tendall said.
After Payne returned to Oklahoma in January, months of nightmares and sleeplessness spurred him to call his Army Reserve unit in April, his mother said.
Sgt. 1st Class John Marshall, in charge of the 812th Military Police Company in Baghdad, said he took a call from Payne the week before his death, but that the soldier declined his offers of help.
"We were talking about whether he was going to stay in the unit or not and he said, 'Well, I just have some problems right now I need to work out,"' Marshall said.
"I asked, 'Is there anything I can do to help? Can I get anybody to talk to you?' He said, 'No, no, no. It's nothing like that. Just some stuff I have to work out on my own.'"