Mentally Ill Forced to Fight

Mentally Ill Forced to Fight

Newspaper says military has sent unfit troops to Iraq, ignores others who need help.

Alexis McCabe's mom, Army Pfc. Melissa Hobart, collapsed and died in June 2004 while on guard duty in Iraq.

(May 19, 2006) -- In the 17 months after their son, Eddie, announced he was heading off to fight the war on terror, Margaret and Edward Brabazon of Bensalem, Pa., had held their breath.

They were accustomed to holding their breath with the boy they had taken in as a foster child at age 3 and adopted at 12 -- the boy who had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and attention-deficit disorder by the time he was 10, and who had spent his early teenage years in a psychiatric hospital and group homes for the emotionally disturbed.

They watched with bewildered pride as the young man they had affectionately nicknamed "Crazy Eddie" was handed a uniform and an M-4 rifle and accepted into an elite fraternity -- the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

"We were surprised they took him, with the kind of mental problems he had, but we figured the Army must know what they're doing," Margaret Brabazon said. "We didn't think they'd send him into combat."

Today, the Brabazons regret those assumptions.

On March 9, 2004, less than three months into his second deployment to the Middle East, Spec. Edward W. Brabazon shot himself in the head with his rifle at a palace compound in Baghdad, the Army has concluded. He was 20.

Mental fitness ignored

Larry Syverson's youngest son was redeployed to Iraq after being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. See full image

Army's response

Col. Elspeth Ritchie, the psychiatric consultant to the Army surgeon general, acknowledged that the questionnaire developed by the military is "not very effective" in identifying trouble soldiers.

The military relies on fellow soldiers and commanders to pick out colleagues who are mentally unfit. "The most important things, pre-deployment, are for people to train together and be prepared for combat together," she said.

Eddie Brabazon was there because the U.S. military has knowingly sent mentally ill troops to Iraq -- in conflict with its own regulations -- and turned a blind eye to the mental fitness of thousands of other service members, a Hartford Courant investigation found.

Despite a congressional mandate to assess the mental health of every soldier sent to a combat zone, interviews and Defense Department records obtained by the Courant reveal a fractured pre-deployment screening process in which less than 1 percent of deploying soldiers ever see a mental health professional. It is a practice that has put unfit service members in harm's way, increasing their risk for suicide and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The military's own studies suggest that as many as 1 in 11 troops is suffering from a major depressive disorder, anxiety disorder or PTSD, which substantially impairs their ability to function at the time they are deployed to war. But military screeners have arranged mental health evaluations for fewer than one in 300 deploying troops, according to a Courant analysis of screening data for more than 930,000 troops processed from March 2003 through October 2005.

Leaders pressured

Overall, soldiers who screened positive for possible mental health problems were deemed fit for war 85 percent of the time, according to the data. Those deployment decisions were made although more than 93 percent of troops who screened positive never received a referral to a mental health specialist.

"Command pressure to deploy their people has kind of swept away any efforts that might have been made to improve screening," said Kathleen Gilberd, who counsels service members in San Diego and serves as co-chairwoman of the Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild.

The Courant's analysis of confirmed and likely suicide cases among U.S. troops in 2005 shows that at least seven, or about one-third, of the soldiers who killed themselves in Iraq did so within three months of being deemed mentally fit and sent into combat. Suicide experts say the vast majority of those who take their own lives are suffering from depression or bipolar disorder at the time, and that it is doubtful soldiers would spontaneously develop a serious mental illness so quickly after deployment.

Weakness in self-reporting

The pre-deployment screening misses so many troubled troops in part because it relies entirely on self-reporting, in the form of a single question on a written form that asks service members whether they have received mental health care in the past year -- a disclosure the military knows its members are unlikely to make.

In the first 32 months of the war, just 3 percent of deploying troops disclosed that they had sought care or counseling for their mental health in the past year. That small percentage captured through self-reporting is far lower than the more than 20 percent of deploying troops who were found to have mental disorders -- 9.3 percent of them considered serious -- in a 2004 study by military doctors.

The 3 percent figure "sounds like a ridiculously low number," said Paul Rieckhoff, a former platoon leader in Iraq and executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

Col. Elspeth Ritchie said the military relies on fellow soldiers and commanders to pick out colleagues who are mentally unfit.

"The most important things, pre-deployment, are for people to train together and be prepared for combat together," she said. "This is a small medical piece of that. ... A pen-and-paper screen is seldom going to pick up something that isn't already apparent."

Last updated: 5/06

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Mentally Ill Forced to Fight