Letter from Guam

“Dear Ms. Spikol,

“I would like to start out by thanking you for your writing. I’ve been stationed over seas going on 3 years now and I miss Philly a lot. I try to check every day to see if you have written anything new; reading your articles, and now your blog, help to lessen the distance.

“Regarding the article on medicated service members being deployed: I think this is no worse of an idea than putting people who are mentally ill in any high stress situation, but if the illness is treatable then why shouldn‘t someone be deployed? Military doctors, just like civilian, are there to evaluate mental health. They know the stresses associated with a military deployment and the problems of the person being evaluated. If the illness is too deep, than they should not be eligible for deployment. Just as you trust in your doctors to help you, so do we, as service members, trust our doctors with our health and safety as well as the health and safety of those around us. We can only hope that the need to fill troop deployments does not out weigh the need to ensure safety for both the individual and the unit.

“Thank you for your time and again for your writing.

“Sincerely,
SrA Ian Smith, USAF
Andersen AFB, Guam”

First of all, let me just say that in all my years of writing, I’ve never once received a communication from Guam. This is extremely exciting. (Ian, you are officially my favorite person affiliated with any military outfit anywhere. That includes TV.)

I haven’t received many emails from servicemen and women. My dad was in the Army, stationed in Berlin. Then I married a guy who was had also been in the Army, stationed in Berlin. Weird, right? My ex-boyfriend, who I lived with for four years, was in the Army reserve and the Coast Guard. (I have him to thank for my favorite hooded Army sweatshirt and a similarly nice gray Army T-shirt. I really like the way those military duds are made.) My domestic life has often been shared with ex-servicemen, yet I was under the impression that most people on active duty figured I was too big a lefty pacifist Quaker meathead to read my work. But the wonders of the Internet, oh my.

That being said, Ian makes an excellent point. Several, in fact.

I would never suggest that a person with a mental illness isn’t fit to be in the military simply because they have bipolar disorder, or OCD, or panic attacks, etc. That would be discriminatory. Mentally ill people are as capable as anyone else of discharging the duties associated with being in the military. It is, in many ways, a job like any other. We wouldn’t want to exclude the mentally ill from any single walk of life. That’s not only unnecessary, it’s unfair.

In this case, the newspaper reports, the U.S. is not just sending mentally ill people to do desk jobs in Berlin. They’re sending people on psychotropic drugs into combat in Iraq, arguably the most dangerous, traumatizing war theater since Vietnam. I don’t trust this adminstration to care about the value of our men and women in uniform, and to worry about their mental health needs at war or when they get home. (In fact, this article points to a disturbing trend of avoiding the diagnosis of PTSD, which will ultimately rob the service people of veteran’s medical coverage when they return.)

And I wonder: If a Marine, say, comes to a psychiatric facility to be treated for PTSD after returning home from Iraq, and is then redeployed shortly after, is it possible their illness has really, truly been addressed? Or have they just been given meds and sent back in? Most of them have wanted to go back. Shouldn’t we confront the psychological motivations that are prompting that desire? Trauma victims often want to return to the scene of the incident to exorcise demons. That’s not a healthy way to go back into combat.

Finally, just because someone is on medication doesn’t mean they’re good to go. It can take years to get the right combination of meds, and being in a war zone while one’s mood is fluctuating dangerously isn’t helpful in treating the illness.

I wish I had more faith in our government and its Dept. of Defense to have the best interests of our troops at heart. But that’s not how I see it. I’m guessing a nuanced understanding of the implications and overlap of mental illness and combat trauma is lacking. We’re at war—soldiers are needed. That might take a perilous precedence.

Am I wrong to worry?

liz | 6:02 PM | Uncategorized