Counseling Services for Military Personnel and Their Families

Counseling and Human Development, May 2003 by Fenell, David L, Fenell, Ruth Ann

The events of September 11, 2001, the War on Terrorism in Afghanistan, and the War to liberate Iraq have focused the attention of the nation on the United States Military. The requirements of military service place tremendous demands on service members and their families. Dangerous training and duties, frequent deployments and separation from families, and the challenges of war are but three of these demands. Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, more than 150,000 citizen-soldiers, members of the National Guard and Reserves, have been called from their civilian jobs and placed on active duty in the military. The mobilized Reserve and Guard have augmented the standing military. Currently, more than 250,000 military service personnel are deployed away from their families in one of the numerous trouble spots around the globe (Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans, Korea, the Philippines, and Colombia).

The demands of military service create Stressors for service members and their families. To provide support in responding to these and other Stressors, the military has developed an array of mental health services that are available to military personnel and their families.

This article introduces to the reader the wide array of services provided to military personnel and their families by the mental health teams of the military services (Mangelsdorff & Gal, 1991). Although all military services have similar programs, we focus here on mental health services provided by the Army. An additional point of clarification has to be made: Counseling services are provided by a variety of mental health professionals: psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, psychiatric nurses, social workers, chaplains, marriage and family therapists, and drug and alcohol specialists. In this article these professionals are referred to variously as behavioral scientists, mental health professionals, counselors, and psychologists. We refer to members of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard as military personnel, or as soldiers. Although the term "soldier" is not technically correct when referring to members of services other than the Army, it is a convenient shorthand term to facilitate concise communication in this article.

THE EVOLUTION OF COUNSELING IN THE MILITARY

The goal of the military services is to enforce the policies and treaties of the United States by the use of combat power or the threat of use of that power. The military is most successful when the threat of using power is sufficient to achieve national aims and our men and women in uniform are not required to go into "harm's way." Still, those who serve must be prepared to face an enemy force in combat and emerge victorious. To that end, the government of the United States expends a large portion of the Department of Defense budget on recruiting, training and equipping our armed forces. These expenditures are designed to produce a professional military force capable of defeating an enemy decisively with minimal casualties to United States military personnel.

One of the important ways the United States military ensures that its men and women are prepared to fight and win wars is to provide quality support services including mental health services. Support services are critical, as they permit military personnel to focus on the combat mission while being assured that support is available for them and for their families. Mental health support services are developed and provided to ensure that military personnel and their family members are psychologically equipped to respond effectively to combat Stressors as well as other occupational and family Stressors associated with military service (Steege & Fritscher, 1991). Moreover, the services provided to family members are designed to alleviate concerns that might diminish the effectiveness of military personnel.

While formal psychological services for the military began in 1917, military leaders have always been concerned with the behavioral sciences. Commanders have observed the behaviors of their enemies and of their own forces in an attempt to strike the enemy when it was most vulnerable and when his own forces were at their physical and mental peak (Cleary, 1988). Formal use of psychological techniques and personnel in the military did not begin until the United States entered World War I in 1917 ( Mangelsdorff & Gal, 1991). The large influx of personnel into the United States military created problems in the assignment of personnel to certain specialized positions. How could the Army put the "right person" in the "right job"?

Building on the work of Binet, military psychologists began developing the Army Alpha and Beta psychological tests. These were tests of intellectual abilities, and the results were used to make administrative decisions regarding assignment to duty positions, schooling, and admission to officer training.

Later, in 1919, Army psychologists were given increased responsibilities including refining selection techniques, making recommendations on training procedures to maximize learning of trainees, working with psychiatric patients and developing procedures to improve combat effectiveness and the morale of troops (Mangelsdorff & Gal, 1991). Thus were the seeds sown for the emergence of the military mental health services. Based on the important contributions of psychology to building an effective force in World War I, the technology of human behavior assessment and treatment was recognized as an important military support function and earned a place in the organizational structure of the military service (Steege & Fritscher, 1991).