People with a history of “self-mutilation,” bipolar disorder, depression and drug and alcohol abuse can now seek waivers to join the Army under an unannounced policy enacted in August, according to documents obtained by USA TODAY.
The decision to open Army recruiting to those with mental health conditions comes as the service faces the challenging goal of recruiting 80,000 new soldiers through September 2018. To meet last year's goal of 69,000, the Army accepted more recruits who fared poorly on aptitude tests, increased the number of waivers granted for marijuana use and offered hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses.
Expanding the waivers for mental health is possible in part because the Army now has access to more medical information about each potential recruit, Lt. Col. Randy Taylor, an Army spokesman, said in a statement. The Army issued the ban on waivers in 2009 amid an epidemic of suicides among troops.
But accepting recruits with those mental-health conditions in their past carries risks, according to Elspeth Cameron Ritchie, a psychiatrist who retired from the Army as a colonel in 2010 and is an expert on waivers for military service. People with a history of mental health problems are more likely to have those issues resurface than those who do not, she said.
“It is a red flag,” she said. “The question is, how much of a red flag is it?”
Oh I would say that it is a big red flag.
Especially considering that when the Bush Administration relaxed enrollment guidelines to allow in recruits with substance abuse issues and some mild mental health issues, it resulted in the Kandahar Massacre and of course the murders in Afghanistan perpetrated by Wasilla's own Jeremy Morlock.
Those men should never have been allowed to don the uniform and yet they were cleared for recruitment and sent overseas into perhaps the most stressful environment on the planet.
And now we are seeing an even further relaxation of the screening process which is supposed to weed out those who cannot handle the challenges of life in the military, and who may end up being a danger to themselves or to others.
Of course how can we really screen out the mentally unfit, when their poster child is currently occupying the White House?
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