Is It Time for a Behavioral Health Corps? Ending the Generational Cycle of Preventable Wartime Mental Health Crises—Part 2

This paper calls for the creation of a unified, integrated Behavioral Health Corps (BHC). Building on previous publications and government reports, the paper reports on the cycle of bad decisions, indecision, and confusion in learning the lessons of previous war-related behavioral health service shortfalls. It is recommended that a special corps of behavioral health specialists be formed within the military that would apply the lessons learned and focus on constructive solutions to end the generational cycle of preventable wartime behavioral health crises. The paper builds on the findings and conclusions of part I of this series of papers. It is noted that this corps would ensure parity with existing corps (i.e., medical corps, and of dentistry, nursing, chaplaincy, judge advocacy, supply, civil engineering, and veterinary). It is noted that the new corps would be charged to implement five critical corrective actions: (1) implement investigative findings into the preventable causes of the current crisis, (2) establish dedicated psychiatric lessons learned policy and programs, (3) create a centralized data collection and reporting system, (4) re-institute President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s mandate for reconditioning and social reintegration services prior to military discharge, and (5) adopt a holistic paradigm of health and illness, with a “zero tolerance” policy of mental health stigma, and disparity that ends “trauma-pension” debates. The overarching goal of such transformative changes as a BHC is to assure that the USA never again goes to war grossly unprepared to manage psychological injuries and to serve as a working model for overhauling the private sector.