National Guard: Moral low,
Training inadequate
Yahoo News/AP
U.S. Soldiers in Iraq Report Low Morale
ROBERT BURNS
AP Military Writer
Jul 20, 2005
WASHINGTON - A majority of U.S. soldiers in Iraq say morale is
low, according to an Army report that finds psychological stress
is weighing particularly heavily on National Guard and Reserve
troops.
Still, soldiers' mental health has improved from the early
months of the insurgency, and suicides have declined sharply, the
report said. Also, substantially fewer soldiers had to be
evacuated from Iraq for mental health problems last year.
The Army sent a team of mental health specialists to Iraq and
Kuwait late last summer to assess conditions and measure progress
in implementing programs designed to fix mental health problems
discovered during a similar survey of troops a year earlier. Its
report, dated Jan. 30, 2005, was released Wednesday.
The initial inquiry was triggered in part by an unusual surge
in suicides among soldiers in Iraq in July 2003. Wednesday's
report said the number of suicides in Iraq and Kuwait declined
from 24 in 2003 to nine last year.
A suicide prevention program was begun for soldiers in Iraq at
the recommendation of the 2003 assessment team.
The overall assessment said 13 percent of soldiers in the most
recent study screened positive for a mental health problem,
compared with 18 percent a year earlier. Symptoms of acute or
post-traumatic stress remained the top mental health problem,
affecting at least 10 percent of all soldiers checked in the
latest survey.
In the anonymous survey, 17 percent of soldiers said they had
experienced moderate or severe stress or problems with alcohol,
emotions or their families. That compares with 23 percent a year
earlier.
The report said reasons for the improvement in mental health
are not clear. Among possible explanations: less frequent and
less intense combat, more comforts like air conditioning, wider
access to mental health services and improved training in
handling the stresses associated with deployments and combat.
National Guard and Reserve soldiers who serve in
transportation and support units suffered more than others from
depression, anxiety and other indications of acute psychological
stress, the report said. These soldiers have often been targets
of the insurgents' lethal ambushes and roadside bombs, although
the report said they had significantly fewer actual combat
experiences than soldiers assigned to combat units.
The report recommended that the Army reconsider whether
National Guard and Reserve support troops are getting adequate
training in combat skills. Even though they do less fighting than
combat troops, they might be better suited to cope with wartime
stress if they had more confidence in their combat skills, it
said.
Only 55 percent of National Guard support soldiers said they
have "real confidence" in their unit's ability to perform its
mission, compared with 63 percent of active-duty Army support
soldiers. And only 28 percent of the Guard troops rated their
level of training as high, compared with 50 percent of their
active-duty counterparts.
Small focus groups were held to ascertain troop morale.
The report said 54 percent of soldiers rated their units'
morale as low or very low. The comparable figure in a
year-earlier Army survey was 72 percent. Although respondents
said "combat stressors" like mortar attacks were higher in the
most recent survey, "noncombat stressors" like uncertain tour
lengths were much lower, the report said.
The thing that bothered soldiers the most, the latest
assessment said, was the length of their required stay in Iraq.
At the start of the war, most were deployed for six months, but
now they go for 12 months.
Asked about this, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told a
Pentagon news conference that the Army's 12-month requirement is
linked in part to its effort to complete a fundamental
reorganization of fighting units.
"I've tried to get the Army to look at the length of tours and
I think at some point down the road they will," he said.
|