Battleland

Dwell Time: Not So Swell?

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War is Dwell

Military leaders have been telling us for years that troops need to spend more time at home between combat deployments – dwell time, as it’s known – to help keep the detritus of war: depression, suicides, divorce, post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental ailments, at bay:

When deployed for 12 months, we must get them to a baseline of 24 months at home.

— Army General Peter Chiarelli, vice chief of staff

We will work towards trying to achieve that goal because we know that that is one of the key factors of ensuring that we sustain our soldiers and their families as we continue to ask them to sacrifice…continue to work towards increasing our dwell time home.

— Army General Ray Odierno

In terms of dwell, the goal is to get to one-to-two…as we draw down in Afghanistan over the next three years…the dwell will probably increase beyond that. The Army will probably get to a one-to-two dwell for units this fall, so in just a few months…we’re headed in a good direction in terms of dwell time.

— Then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates

So how would you like to be the Pentagon investigators who discover that troops seem be better off when they spend less time at home between combat tours?

“For most disorders, the longer the `dwell times’ prior to deployments, the larger the percentages diagnosed with the [various mental-health] conditions after the deployments,” the Pentagon’s Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center concludes in a recent study. Gulp. You best add an important caveat high up: “The findings should be interpreted with consideration of limitations of the analysis.”

And then you’d try to explain your counter-intuitive result:

In considering the implications of this finding, it may be useful to think of dwell times in relation to the transition/readjustment periods that inevitably follow combat deployments….Based on extensive clinical and research experiences, [Army Dr. Charles] Hoge has observed that “warriors and their family members are often surprised at how difficult the transition period is after coming back from a combat deployment.”…With long dwell times between repeat deployments, deployers may complete the work of transition/readjustment from deployed to nondeployed status before deploying again – and then transitioning/readjusting again from non-deployed to “warrior” status. For some service members, short dwell times that interrupt transitions/readjustments from deployed to non-deployed status between repeat deployments may be less psychologically traumatic…Clearly, the effects of dwell times in relation to repeat wartime deployments require much more investigation.

Military doctors aren’t convinced the finding should be seen as surprising. “Rather than thinking that longer dwell times causes more mental health diagnoses, I’d rather think that longer dwell times give service members time to seek help appropriately,” says Air Force Col. Christopher Robinson, deputy director of psychological health for the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury. He tells Elaine Sanchez of the Pentagon’s press service that “I still stand by the notion that longer dwell times are helpful for the health of our service members.”

Bottom line, for the lay reader: short wars work best.