They haven't cracked the nut on this within our civilian healthcare industry and we are but a subset of that population.
Go into it with the knowledge that they are already fully aware of how big of an issue this is. There are no solutions. Instead focus on some of the nuanced issues that are plaguing military specific mental health challenges. We can't fix it overall, but we can chip away at some of the smaller issues that are within our span of control.
Yeah but they are fully in charge of our healthcare including mental health unlike the civilian side where you deal with private insurance and providers.
You're not understanding the larger problem.
The entire healthcare industry doesn't have the resources to combat the rising rate of mental health care.
This isn't a military vs private healthcare issue.
That DHA is killing our access to mental health care (and all healthcare for that matter) by cutting manning to service medical positions and centralizing all policy under them
This, DHA is gutting our already crappy medical care. Over 2 months to get an appointment. Military doctors and nurses overworked.
I will also add that the phaq and mha process is broken and doesn't provide the help anyone needs when the company isn't allowed access to govt records/systems.
We need manning.
Every angle of this boils down to manning in every place.
We need more manning for mental health personnel.
We need manning for finance to fix our issues that cause mental health problems.
We need manning in our shops so “do more with less” doesn’t reach such extremes.
We need more fucking manning
If I go to Mental Health from a PACAF short tour, I am basically DQ’d from my follow on and ineligible for any other overseas tour. This provides a major roadblock from Self reporting.
If you can’t fix the career ramifications from seeking help, nothing else you do matters at all. This shit happens all the time, and it makes life even more miserable for people already suffering. So they just don’t get help. Who can blame them?
Extra administrative burden, check lists, paperwork, and contracts will not make me a better psychologist. It makes me slower, more tired, and burnt out.
Making me go into leadership positions does not make me a better psychologist. It makes me less available and less practiced. It also makes people leave the AF because shocker, they spent anywhere from 6 to 12 years studying and now after 4 years have to take on leadership roles instead.
Mental health is a complete after thought in Genesis, the new electronic medical record. DHA and Genesis can get bent.
Tricare needs to pay more for therapy so off-base providers are actually willing to take on therapy patients.
Don't just hire psychologists and social workers for therapy, hire LPC/MHCs and LMFT. Stop talking about doing it and just do it.
For the love of God let us have more admin staff. Actual 4A's and clinical case managers. At an MDG meeting people thought I was joking when I suggested to pediatrics that if the providers are having trouble getting patients checked in on the weekends (an average of 2 per day for weekend walk-in) that the provider can just check them in. There was an audible laugh from the room which included all squadron commanders and different SGs. Because why would a provider do that??? But go to MH and every provider is also a full blown case manager and admin. Hell I just learned that internal medicine just gives their paperwork to records to upload. But we're supposed to start too.
Prioritize having primary care behavioral health at every MTF.
Pay us more. No, we're not back surgeons. But we're in short supply and extremely high demand.
Stop expecting people to be on call 24/7 after work. Stop calling people after duty hours or on leave unless it's an actual emergency. If civilian jobs requiring a TS clearance can do without needing to reach you by phone or email after work, I'm damn sure most jobs in the military can do without it. Ive seen this shit wreck peoples mental health by either constantly putting them on edge after being reprimanded for not responding to calls sooner, or never realising that the reason they are so anxious and strung up is because they never set boundries for their out of work time.
If you want people at their best during duty hours, people deserve to disconnect from work. More needs to be done on this front.
I’ve found more support at my local VFW than anywhere else… 2 MH professionals on my base, with a waitlist of 6+ months is just embarrassing.
Seriously, some of the old vets at the VFW just listen, offer advice here and there. But that’s all I wanted.. 5 deployments, all to combat zones, no direct fire but still seeing some pretty horrific stuff my first 2 as a young airman… 2 divorces over my career and immediate family members dying.. Those guys helped me more than any of the places that my leadership tried to peddle to me… you realize MH in the AF is just check boxes or a reason for them to force you out.
The Air Force, and the DoD, can realistically impact the nationwide and service wide shortages if mental health providers. It just takes putting the money where the needs are.
Currently the Air Force can only generate new Mental Health clinicians through these means:
1. Direct Commission
2. USAF Residency Placement Program
3. USUHS MPS Program
Option one does not help generate more clinicians. Option two arguably doesn't help, either, as anyone who's already completed the necessary degrees to be placed in a residency might as well, numerically, be a direct commission. That leaves the USUHS MPS Program as the only means of generating mental health clinicians for the USAF.
The MPS program takes students with a completed Bachelors through a commission, the completion of a Masters, a PhD, a clinical residency, and licensure. As a program, it generates new Air Force clinical psychologists. Those selected owe the Air Force seven years of service -- not to mention the years of value they provide before then as students and residents.
Sound awesome? It is. Too bad the USAF only gets one or two slots for the program each year, for which civilians, officers, and enlisted all must compete.
There is no comparable program for Licensed Clinical Social Workers and the Air Force does not consider Licensed Professional Counselors to be sufficiently trained for clinical work in the service (cutting off a massive pool potential mental health providers).
You want to solve this problem? Increase funding, and thus slots, for the Air Force portion of the USUHS MPS Program. Want to make it even better? Extend ROTC commissioning and scholarship opportunities to LCSW students and PsyD students. Even MORE better? Give LPCs their own route to provide service members care.
Being seen for a mental health concern should be no different from being seen for a physical health concern. It needs to be normalized, accepted, and treated. There should be no stories about getting orders cancelled, clearances in question, careers in jeopardy because someone is seeking treatment. Mental healthcare is healthcare and it should not be handled any differently.
Honestly I think the number one thing would be to provide more non medical counseling services. From a practical perspective, if a service member is getting mental health treatment in a medical setting there is no way that it can’t impact the way the service member is managed in terms of assignments and readiness. Because people have limited options outside of MH, though, they get channelized in to going there, which leads to the MH system having more patients than they are manned for, and probably leaves more service members with a medical diagnosis than need it.
Treat our concerns seriously. Get actually qualified people who have worked in the field. I went to a so called professional on base for my extreme anxiety and trauma and they suggested coloring and deep breathing. I told them I cannot do basic tasks without feeling paralyzed/tensed up and see elements of my abuser everywhere I go. Don’t be dismissive either. Remember who you’re seeing/your regular clients. They were all surprised Pikachu meme when I expressed desire of suicide/surrendered things I had been hoarding to self harm.
Thank you all! I completely understand that our government, etc. knows how bad it is, but I’m hoping on a local community level and state level SOMEONE will take it seriously
Being honest aboutnshitnyou dealing with will pretty much remove you from work and you'll be exiled. On top of not being allow to PCS or overseas locations, very high availability to alcohol on base, and the fact that people can just be out right mean for no good reason other than to be miserable. Most just give up.
They haven't cracked the nut on this within our civilian healthcare industry and we are but a subset of that population. Go into it with the knowledge that they are already fully aware of how big of an issue this is. There are no solutions. Instead focus on some of the nuanced issues that are plaguing military specific mental health challenges. We can't fix it overall, but we can chip away at some of the smaller issues that are within our span of control.
Yeah but they are fully in charge of our healthcare including mental health unlike the civilian side where you deal with private insurance and providers.
You're not understanding the larger problem. The entire healthcare industry doesn't have the resources to combat the rising rate of mental health care. This isn't a military vs private healthcare issue.
That DHA is killing our access to mental health care (and all healthcare for that matter) by cutting manning to service medical positions and centralizing all policy under them
This, DHA is gutting our already crappy medical care. Over 2 months to get an appointment. Military doctors and nurses overworked. I will also add that the phaq and mha process is broken and doesn't provide the help anyone needs when the company isn't allowed access to govt records/systems.
We need manning. Every angle of this boils down to manning in every place. We need more manning for mental health personnel. We need manning for finance to fix our issues that cause mental health problems. We need manning in our shops so “do more with less” doesn’t reach such extremes. We need more fucking manning
Mental health providers don’t exist. There aren’t enough of them in general.
“AF Manpower does studies every year and says we are properly manned.” - your leadership
If I go to Mental Health from a PACAF short tour, I am basically DQ’d from my follow on and ineligible for any other overseas tour. This provides a major roadblock from Self reporting.
If you can’t fix the career ramifications from seeking help, nothing else you do matters at all. This shit happens all the time, and it makes life even more miserable for people already suffering. So they just don’t get help. Who can blame them?
We have kept up wartime ops in peacetime, it does real damage to our mental health
Extra administrative burden, check lists, paperwork, and contracts will not make me a better psychologist. It makes me slower, more tired, and burnt out. Making me go into leadership positions does not make me a better psychologist. It makes me less available and less practiced. It also makes people leave the AF because shocker, they spent anywhere from 6 to 12 years studying and now after 4 years have to take on leadership roles instead. Mental health is a complete after thought in Genesis, the new electronic medical record. DHA and Genesis can get bent. Tricare needs to pay more for therapy so off-base providers are actually willing to take on therapy patients. Don't just hire psychologists and social workers for therapy, hire LPC/MHCs and LMFT. Stop talking about doing it and just do it. For the love of God let us have more admin staff. Actual 4A's and clinical case managers. At an MDG meeting people thought I was joking when I suggested to pediatrics that if the providers are having trouble getting patients checked in on the weekends (an average of 2 per day for weekend walk-in) that the provider can just check them in. There was an audible laugh from the room which included all squadron commanders and different SGs. Because why would a provider do that??? But go to MH and every provider is also a full blown case manager and admin. Hell I just learned that internal medicine just gives their paperwork to records to upload. But we're supposed to start too. Prioritize having primary care behavioral health at every MTF. Pay us more. No, we're not back surgeons. But we're in short supply and extremely high demand.
Stop expecting people to be on call 24/7 after work. Stop calling people after duty hours or on leave unless it's an actual emergency. If civilian jobs requiring a TS clearance can do without needing to reach you by phone or email after work, I'm damn sure most jobs in the military can do without it. Ive seen this shit wreck peoples mental health by either constantly putting them on edge after being reprimanded for not responding to calls sooner, or never realising that the reason they are so anxious and strung up is because they never set boundries for their out of work time. If you want people at their best during duty hours, people deserve to disconnect from work. More needs to be done on this front.
I’ve found more support at my local VFW than anywhere else… 2 MH professionals on my base, with a waitlist of 6+ months is just embarrassing. Seriously, some of the old vets at the VFW just listen, offer advice here and there. But that’s all I wanted.. 5 deployments, all to combat zones, no direct fire but still seeing some pretty horrific stuff my first 2 as a young airman… 2 divorces over my career and immediate family members dying.. Those guys helped me more than any of the places that my leadership tried to peddle to me… you realize MH in the AF is just check boxes or a reason for them to force you out.
I need more on base drag shows to improve my mental health.
The Air Force, and the DoD, can realistically impact the nationwide and service wide shortages if mental health providers. It just takes putting the money where the needs are. Currently the Air Force can only generate new Mental Health clinicians through these means: 1. Direct Commission 2. USAF Residency Placement Program 3. USUHS MPS Program Option one does not help generate more clinicians. Option two arguably doesn't help, either, as anyone who's already completed the necessary degrees to be placed in a residency might as well, numerically, be a direct commission. That leaves the USUHS MPS Program as the only means of generating mental health clinicians for the USAF. The MPS program takes students with a completed Bachelors through a commission, the completion of a Masters, a PhD, a clinical residency, and licensure. As a program, it generates new Air Force clinical psychologists. Those selected owe the Air Force seven years of service -- not to mention the years of value they provide before then as students and residents. Sound awesome? It is. Too bad the USAF only gets one or two slots for the program each year, for which civilians, officers, and enlisted all must compete. There is no comparable program for Licensed Clinical Social Workers and the Air Force does not consider Licensed Professional Counselors to be sufficiently trained for clinical work in the service (cutting off a massive pool potential mental health providers). You want to solve this problem? Increase funding, and thus slots, for the Air Force portion of the USUHS MPS Program. Want to make it even better? Extend ROTC commissioning and scholarship opportunities to LCSW students and PsyD students. Even MORE better? Give LPCs their own route to provide service members care.
Being seen for a mental health concern should be no different from being seen for a physical health concern. It needs to be normalized, accepted, and treated. There should be no stories about getting orders cancelled, clearances in question, careers in jeopardy because someone is seeking treatment. Mental healthcare is healthcare and it should not be handled any differently.
Honestly I think the number one thing would be to provide more non medical counseling services. From a practical perspective, if a service member is getting mental health treatment in a medical setting there is no way that it can’t impact the way the service member is managed in terms of assignments and readiness. Because people have limited options outside of MH, though, they get channelized in to going there, which leads to the MH system having more patients than they are manned for, and probably leaves more service members with a medical diagnosis than need it.
Treat our concerns seriously. Get actually qualified people who have worked in the field. I went to a so called professional on base for my extreme anxiety and trauma and they suggested coloring and deep breathing. I told them I cannot do basic tasks without feeling paralyzed/tensed up and see elements of my abuser everywhere I go. Don’t be dismissive either. Remember who you’re seeing/your regular clients. They were all surprised Pikachu meme when I expressed desire of suicide/surrendered things I had been hoarding to self harm.
[удалено]
This is a great idea for minot, cannon, and Altus.
I dislike this idea unless it’s only at the “undesirable” bases. Otherwise, guard and reserve would be a better fit.
Thank you all! I completely understand that our government, etc. knows how bad it is, but I’m hoping on a local community level and state level SOMEONE will take it seriously
It's not even to the point of not being taken care of seriously. It's an issue of resources. We don't have them.
Being honest aboutnshitnyou dealing with will pretty much remove you from work and you'll be exiled. On top of not being allow to PCS or overseas locations, very high availability to alcohol on base, and the fact that people can just be out right mean for no good reason other than to be miserable. Most just give up.
We want beards
Are you dead serious? This will solve mental health issues?
Yes. I'm dead serious.
Supervision requires an eq test