Hats off to Adm. Michael Mullen, the Pentagon’s top uniformed officer, for taking a leadership role in combating post-traumatic stress disorder among returning combat troops.

Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is calling for all returning combat troops, including the commanders, to undergo screening for post-traumatic stress with a mental health professional, a move aimed at stemming an epidemic of psychological issues among veterans.

“The PTS issue is something we just all have to focus on,” Mullen said. “I think it’s a bigger problem than we know.”

Mullen said troops are reluctant to acknowledge psychological problems for fear of showing weakness. They now fill out questionnaires after combat tours that help determine if they have suffered psychological damage. They’re examined by medical professionals for physical injuries, but not by mental health experts.

“I’m at a point where I believe we have to give a (mental health) screening to everybody to help remove the stigma of raising your hand,” Mullen said. “`Leaders must lead on this issue, or it will affect us dramatically down the road.”

Mullen’s proposal is a great start because it focuses on active-duty personnel who can be ordered around. And if implemented properly, it will reduce the stigma both for active-duty troops and others.

But it’s only a proposal at this stage. Mullen doesn’t know when it would start, what it would cost, or where’s he’s going to be able to find the psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers to carry it out.

So this is a perfect time for me to make some suggestions that will help the admiral achieve his goal.

1) Expand the plan so it includes National Guard and Reserve personnel returning from combat. Their rates for PTSD are abnormally high because they tend to be older soldiers with families who never really thought signing up as a weekend warrior would land them in a combat zone.

2) Many troops develop PTSD six months to a year after their return. Soldiers should be checked for combat stress every six month for the first two years after returning from combat. Then at each annual physical exam, there should be a mental health component.

3) Crisis response teams, including a personnel officer and a chaplain, are invaluable in tracking down the soldiers who begin to exhibit problems, either on the job or during drill weekends. For National Guard troops in California and Montana, it has been very useful to have mental health counselors on base during drill weekends to chat with soldiers about any developing problems.

4) This doesn’t begin to address PTSD among the millions of vets who’ve left active duty, and the VA is currently swamped by the number of earlier-era vets — particularly the ‘Nam vets traumatized by the current conflict. The Pentagon should be working hand-in-hand with the VA to utilize effective techniques in common. But it will ultimately be up to Congress to provide the funding to begin to meet a massive backload.

These are some of the steps that the Montana National Guard has taken to become a national model in assessing PTSD among its returning combat troops and its veterans. For more information on the Montana model, check out my book: Faces of Combat, PTSD & TBI. I just got my first shipment of books from the printer this afternoon, so it should be in bookstores within days.       

Over dinner last night, my good friend and former colleague Tom Kotynski pointed out an article in the “New Yorker” that he said was journalism at its best. He’s right.

“The Last Tour, a decorated Marine’s war within,” by William Finnegan is the heart-wrenching tale of Travis Twiggs, who was deployed into combat five times, diagnosed with PTSD and wrote about what he hoped was his recovery in the “Marine Corps Gazette” last January.

That turned out to be an illusion.

Twiggs later came to believe that the acronym was merely a euphemism for a weak Marine. and he toughed it out for as long as he could — just four months. Last May, he shot his brother and himself to death after what appears to have been a failed double suicide attempt in their Toyota Corolla.

What jumped out at me, though, was the letter that one of Twiggs’ friends, Maj. Valerie A. Jackson, also a Marine, wrote to the “Marine Corps Gazette”: “There are many programs in place now to help those suffering from PTSD. By the time Twiggs got involved in those, though, it was far too late. His problems should have been identified after each deployment, and when the commands realized he needed serious help (after the second deployment), he should have been prevented from deploying again. Period. I realize that a symptom of the disease is an overarching need to be in the fight. But there comes a time when someone with some influence needs to say, ‘No Staff Sergeant, enough is enough. You’ve done your part.’ … The Twiggs family should not be mourning the loss of their husband, father and son. We let them down, and we let SSgt. Twiggs down.”

Amen to that, Maj. Jackson.

Twiggs’ story is a heartbreaking one, almost like a very expensive Purdy shotgun that blows up in your face. And that’s an apt analogy. Expensive weapons can be destroyed when their owners neglect to take proper care of them.

The same is true of our soldiers. They require faithful care and periodic inspection to make sure they’re capable of carrying out their tasks, to make sure that there are no cracks and potential malfunctions.

Our armed forces haven’t been doing that, and they should. A Purdy shotgun and a soldier are alike in many ways, but there’s one critical difference — when the shotgun jams, it doesn’t leave behind a widow, fatherless children and grieving parents.

Knowing that I’ve made a difference in someone’s life is one of the best feelings I know. That’s why I was in tears last weekend at the second annual Great Falls Stand-Down ceremony.

The Stand-Down is a military ceremony to let soldiers know that their mission has been accomplished, but it has taken on a new meaning in Montana. With so many former combat vets essentially hiding out in this vast and vastly under-populated state, it has become a way to connect emotionally wounded warriors and provide them with help, things like survival gear, cold-weather sleeping bags and warm clothing.

I was covering the event for the Great Falls Tribune when I ran into Dave Belcher, a former combat vet whom I had interviewed for my book, Faces of Combat.  A former platoon sergeant during Operation Desert Storm and Desert Shield, Dave came back with an enormous load of anger that he couldn’t control, much of it directed at his wife Daneil.

When I sat down to talk with the couple, Daneil was still terrified at saying something that might set off her husband so agreed to visit with her along. There she told me that it was so frustrating to watch her husband getting better while she was stuck with her own anger at the way he had treated her. I began to see that Dave’s post-traumatic stress disorder was becoming shared by his partially traumatized wife.

I urged her to see a counselor, even recommending a particular woman who I knew could help her and making an introductory phone call on her behalf. I saw her a couple of times over the next couple of months, but each time she told me that she hadn’t mustered the nerve to set up an appointment — she was worried about how her husband might react.

So I was surprised when Dave stopped to tell me, “Daneil is going to see a counselor now, and I couldn’t be happier.” I told him I was really glad, that she needed help in getting past her own anger and learning again to forgive and trust.

“It’s making a tremendous difference to us,” he said. “It’s really opened things up. I cvan’t tell you how much of a difference you have made in our lives.”

So that’s how I came to be stumbling out of the vets’ Stand-Down in tears last weekend.  Mercifully, vets are quite accustomed to tears, so no one even gave me a second look.

For the full story on Dave and Daneil, see chapter 5 of Faces of Combat, which should be in bookstores across America by the middle of October. I guess it’s remarkable that the book is making that kind of an impact before it’s even released.

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