I hope I've understood your question correctly. You will tell me whether I have, based on my answer.
When military personnel are suffering from PTSD, how can we ensure that they recognize the symptoms themselves and come for treatment?
In fact, we hope that the COs will recognize the signs in their men. The COs often are very fatherly towards their men. Good officers have a great deal of empathy and are very attentive to the health of their men. We hope that, when it comes time to tell personnel that they are suffering from a trauma, that they will take the first steps. We also hope that this disorder will be increasingly recognized within the armed forces, so that military personnel can themselves recognize their own symptoms. So to date we have been talking about two sources of referral: the CO and the soldier himself.
The third source of referral is the spouse. Sometimes the spouse will tell her husband that he is unbearable at home and that this has been true since he returned from Afghanistan. In some cases, she gives him the choice between getting help or getting a divorce. Many people come for that reason. They are very resistant, but they come nevertheless because if they do not their spouse will leave them.
In some cases, the spouse wakes up at night because her husband cries out in his sleep. Some military personnel believe for a few minutes that they're still in Afghanistan; they grab their spouse and run with her into the basement to protect her. It's as if they were still on mission and they know it. Furthermore, the spouse is often the one who is able to accurately assess how much their spouse is drinking. He thinks it's just a little beer and that it's not really serious.
In short, we typically have three sources of referral: the CO, the military personnel themselves or their families. When the family sends the individual for treatment, it's a necessity.