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Veterans Affairs committee That issue is being discussed. Right now there is a plan in place to start doing periodic health assessments, and part of that would be a psychological screen for post-traumatic stress disorder.
May 15th, 2008Committee meeting
Col Carl A. Castro
Veterans Affairs committee Good question, sir. We try to do the pre-deployment battlemind training within 30 days of soldiers deploying. There are two post-deployment battlemind training modules. One of the modules is intended to be given to soldiers within the first week of returning home, prior to them going on this 30 days of block leave.
May 15th, 2008Committee meeting
Col Carl A. Castro
Veterans Affairs committee That's right.
May 15th, 2008Committee meeting
Col Carl A. Castro
Veterans Affairs committee The reservists and the National Guard in the United States also have to go through this three- to six-month post-deployment health evaluation, including the mental health screen, and they are also required to go through the second battlemind training. Where we really stumble is with those service members who actually leave the military, because we lose track of them completely.
May 15th, 2008Committee meeting
Col Carl A. Castro
Veterans Affairs committee A very good question. We've taken two approaches to that. One approach is that we still employ the platoon level of battlemind psychological debriefings, so one mental health care provider can interact and support 30 soldiers at a time. In addition, we have resources for those who need individualized care.
May 15th, 2008Committee meeting
Col Carl A. Castro
Veterans Affairs committee Let me give you some data that we collected about six months ago looking at our pre-deployment training. By the time the program came out a year ago, obviously a lot of soldiers had deployed to Iraq and didn't get the battlemind pre-deployment training, and some soldiers did get the pre-deployment training before they deployed to Iraq.
May 15th, 2008Committee meeting
Col Carl A. Castro
Veterans Affairs committee That's a very good question. I probably should have started with this, given that your committee is focused on the veterans affairs. We have been working very, very closely with the Department of Veterans Affairs. They have actually taken the battlemind training system, which we developed for active duty, and modified it for use for veterans who come to the Department of Veterans Affairs for psychological help.
May 15th, 2008Committee meeting
Col Carl A. Castro
Veterans Affairs committee I'm a colonel.
May 15th, 2008Committee meeting
Col Carl A. Castro
Veterans Affairs committee Yes, sir.
May 15th, 2008Committee meeting
Col Carl A. Castro
Veterans Affairs committee No, that is the right word. That is the right word, sir.
May 15th, 2008Committee meeting
Col Carl A. Castro
Veterans Affairs committee Okay. At the end of my answers to your questions, if I actually skip one, please remind me. Let me first say that we started looking at changing the way we do mental health training because the way it went in 2001 and 2002, when the war in Afghanistan started, was that the U.S. military had no standardized mental health training program at all--neither the army nor the air force nor the marine corps nor the navy.
May 15th, 2008Committee meeting
Col Carl A. Castro
Veterans Affairs committee Vice-chair and members of the committee, thank you for having me. It's my pleasure to be here. I was asked to say just a couple of brief words about the battlemind training system. Is that correct? Is that what the focus of this--
May 15th, 2008Committee meeting
Colonel Carl A. Castro
Veterans Affairs committee Okay. I want to highlight maybe just three key things if I can. One of them is that the U.S. Army has officially adopted the battlemind training system as a mental health training program, and I really should emphasize that the battlemind training system is a mental health training program.
May 15th, 2008Committee meeting
Col Carl A. Castro