I suggest you write the DOD that 18-21 years olds should have a right to chemically altered realities. Then post the response at Free Republic.
Drug use, however, is holding steady far below the rate for civilians.
The survey identified what Pentagon officials called a sizable group of military members who are having problems with stress and mental health without necessarily seeking help. Almost half of the respondents said seeking mental health counseling probably or definitely would damage their careers.
The results released Monday are from a survey conducted in the fall of 2002, just before tens of thousands of troops deployed to the Persian Gulf in preparation for the invasion of Iraq.
Dr. William Winkenwerder, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, told a Pentagon news conference that survey data was as yet unavailable to measure mental health conditions among the 120,000 or so American soldiers who spent the past 12 months at war in .
The Army has studied suicides, which rose sharply last July, as the toll on American troops rose from the insurgency, but later fell to levels similar to peacetime averages. It found that many suicides were associated with failures of personal relationships and financial problems.
Of the 12,756 troops who responded to the Pentagon's 2002 survey, conducted at 30 military installations worldwide, about one-third said they felt a lot of stress in their military duties. An additional 30 percent said they felt some stress.
The most frequently cited sources of stress for men were deployment (18.9 percent) and separation from family (18.7 percent); the women cited changes in personal life (21.4 percent), separation from family (21.2 percent) and deployment (19.6 percent). Injuries, illness and workplace accidents were twice as common among those who described themselves as stressed.
The survey found that 5 percent of all who participated said they had considered suicide or self-injury within the year prior to the survey, and it found that heavy users of alcohol had more problems with workplace stress than abstainers, by a margin of 40 percent to 30 percent.
In specific findings:
-The share of military members categorized as heavy drinkers (having five or more drinks on a single occasion at least once a week) rose to 18.1 percent from 15.4 percent in the previous survey in 1998. When the survey was first done in 1980 that figure was about 21 percent.
-Military personnel aged 18 to 25 showed significantly higher rates of heavy drinking (27.3%) than civilians (15.3%).
-Cigarette smoking rose from 30 percent in the 1998 survey to 34 percent in the latest survey. This was the first increase recorded in the seven times military members have been questioned on this since 1980. In that first survey 51 percent were smokers. In the civilian U.S. population, about 31 percent are smokers today, according to figures provided by the Pentagon.
About 30 percent said they had taken up smoking since joining the military. Last fall military medical authorities said they found in investigating 19 cases of severe pneumonia among soldiers in and around Iraq that most had taken up smoking shortly before falling ill.
-The percentage who reported use of illicit drugs was 3.4 percent, up from 2.7 percent in 1998 but not a statistically significant change, according to Robert M. Bray of RTI International, which conducted the survey under contract to the Pentagon. He said the 3.4 percent for the military compares with about 12 percent for the civilian population of the United States.
-Forty-one percent of women said they were under a great deal or a fairly large amount of stress stemming from being a woman in the military. Women in the Navy had the highest rate (49 percent), followed by women in the Army (46 percent), Marine Corps (44 percent) and Air Force (31 percent).
In measuring overall job satisfaction, 65 percent indicated they were either satisfied or very satisfied with their current assignment. Satisfaction was highest in the Air Force (72 percent) and lowest in the Army (61 percent). Males and females indicated similar levels of satisfaction.
Survey results in full: http://www.tricare.osd.mil/main/news/art0514.html
thanks, you kind of made my point for me.
we are at war. that's pretty stressful for all of us. stress relief behavior goes up.
the first drug test i remember was in 1980....maybe that's why drinking went up after? :-)
I bet that drinking is much heaver in the college student demographic than it is in the military demographic of the same age.
You remind me of my late aunt. She called the cops on her husband for smoking a cigarette. Despite the evils of tobacco {he quit smoking upon retirement} he managed to go from E-1 to LTCDR in rank and Captained a Gator Freighter as well. I'm certain he managed a drink or two along the way as well. But he joinned up for WW2 and got out in 1969.
Now as for the stress? Look at over deployments. What has congress or Rummy done about that? That kills more men by mistakes due to combat fatugue but you don't hear about a study on it. Let me tell you something about such things. When those ships deploy the line to see the JAG is as long as the pay line when the first mail call hits for divorce papers. should Rummy prohibit marriage as well?
The report you showed is Horse Hillary. One's lungs are not damaged to the point of pnuemonia by recently taking up smoking. They were in a third world nation for Pete sake.