Posted on Feb 3, 2016
Senators to Army: Stop misconduct discharges until review is completed
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A group of lawmakers wants the Army to stop discharging soldiers who have been diagnosed with mental health problems because of their service in Iraq or Afghanistan.
The move comes one month after the Army announced it would conduct a “thorough, multidisciplinary” review in response to a call from 12 senators to investigate reports that the service discharged for misconduct as many as 22,000 combat veterans who had been diagnosed with mental health problems.
“It doesn’t make sense to continue these discharges while the practice is in the midst of multiple reviews,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said in a statement. “Soldiers prevented from serving due to post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injury should be treated like we treat those with physical injuries, not be discharged, cast aside and ignored. They fought for their country and have earned the benefit of the doubt.”
The move comes one month after the Army announced it would conduct a “thorough, multidisciplinary” review in response to a call from 12 senators to investigate reports that the service discharged for misconduct as many as 22,000 combat veterans who had been diagnosed with mental health problems.
“It doesn’t make sense to continue these discharges while the practice is in the midst of multiple reviews,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said in a statement. “Soldiers prevented from serving due to post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injury should be treated like we treat those with physical injuries, not be discharged, cast aside and ignored. They fought for their country and have earned the benefit of the doubt.”
Senators to Army: Stop misconduct discharges until review is completed
Posted from armytimes.com
Soldiers
Discharge
Posted 9 y ago
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SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL Great, sounds fair to me, if the military broke SMs, the military should fix them, not dump them on the streets!
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SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL
CSM Charles Hayden roger that, great statement and lets see if the Military is going to get the problem squared away.
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That is a very broad statement for the US Senate to make to the Army SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL "Stop misconduct discharges until review is completed"
Hopefully reason will prevail to allow for a triage process which determines pending discharges based on potential psychiatric or medical issues such as PTSD versus those caused by what could be considered punitive offenses based on other reasons including drug and alcohol abuse.
Hopefully reason will prevail to allow for a triage process which determines pending discharges based on potential psychiatric or medical issues such as PTSD versus those caused by what could be considered punitive offenses based on other reasons including drug and alcohol abuse.
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SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL
LTC Stephen F. I hope this action will be used solely for honorably/faithfully Soldiers who have served and have potential psychiatric or medical issues such as PTSD
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One thing that is being overlooked are the Soldiers who get into trouble and THEN claim some kind of mental health issue. We recently caught a NCO in some misconduct and he immediately said he was going to harm himself. If he was the only one who did that I would chalk it up to him possibly having an issue. Unfortunately MOST of our young Soldiers do not have much in the way of resiliency so when they are faced with adversity they often look to find an excuse.
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