No Kidding!
“There was no known injury that might lead us to investigate the possibility of a battle-related traumatic brain injury,” McHugh said.“According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, personality disorders are conditions that affect how a person perceives situations and relates to people and circumstances.”“They often develop in adolescence and last a lifetime, affecting relationships, family, employment and daily life.”“Common personality disorders include symptoms such as paranoia, narcissism, avoidance, alienation, mood swings or apathy.”“Many serial killers have been diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, including Jeffrey Dahmer and Charles Manson. A 2009 study of school shooters conducted by the Lee Salk Center for Research noted the five psychotic shooters that researchers investigated each had schizophrenia and schizotypal personality disorder.”“The Army’s frequent diagnoses of personality disorder and a similar condition, adjustment disorder, came under fire in 2012 when it was revealed that a medical board changed a number of soldiers’ PTSD diagnoses to personality or adjustment disorders, which are not considered to be conditions deserving compensation.”“Since 2001, the service has discharged at least 31,000 service members for personality or adjustment disorders.”“Most mental health conditions preclude those who have them from joining military service. But in the mid-2000s, the Army broadened its waiver process in order to increase its force. In 2007, about a third of recruits had a waiver, either for weight or pre-existing medical conditions, including misconduct or substance abuse.”
Actually
the people in the Army nowadays are much better behaved than the ones
we had when I first joined in 1978. You would not believe the
“mother-rappers” and “father-stabbers” and general “Gomer Pyles” and
“Sad Sacks” we had in the service back then! People who typically joined
the Army after they got fired from their last four jobs. Army
installations experienced race riots on a regular basis during the
1970’s, Fort Hood in particular. Violent “big city” crime was fairly
prevalent on and in the civilian communities near the larger domestic
forts, as well as many overseas installations. Disgruntled soldiers
frequently committed acts of sabotage, like slashing the tires on the
vehicles in the unit motor pool. It was common to drive to work in the
morning and see “FTA” , (F__ the Army) painted on buildings during the
night. Soldiers would get drunk and /or high and commit suicide in all
sorts of bizarre and imaginative ways. Once the Congress brought back
the G.I. Bill in the mid-eighties, the post-Vietnam all-volunteer Army
was able to attract a much better class of recruit. The National Guard
tuition grants for college have served to attract a lot of bright young
people to the military as well. Then with an improved recruiting
situation, the Army was able to show the trouble-makers and chronic
malcontents the door with greater alacrity and things calmed down
considerably on Army installations.
Certainly
we didn’t have the kind of mass murderers during the ‘70s that the
services have experienced lately. But then, to my knowledge, the service
psychiatrists in those days weren’t handing out anti-depressant
medication and sleep medications as freely as they seem to be doing
nowadays. That seems to have some kind of connection to recent mass
murders that needs to be explored further. By Epictetus
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