PTSD? Sure, we've got an app for that!
It was only a couple of months ago we noted that the Senate had urged the military services to pare back their geysers of competing programs fighting with one another to fight the plague of post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries afflicting U.S. troops. “They’ve launched dozens of programs with multiple websites to deal with the vexing challenge,” Battleland reported. Commenters agreed: “From a 10-year Army wife and military family advocate: You are spot on,” one posted.
Alas, we just learned, there aren’t dozens of anti-PTSD programs. There are hundreds: 211, to be precise — according to a new report from the Rand Corp. No wonder we’re not sure what we’re getting for the $1 billion we’re spending on them each year. They range from the Air Force’s and Army’s ACE – Ask, Care, Escort program, to the Navy Reserves’ Yellow Ribbon Reintegration Program (check out the 10-page list, which begins on page 76 of the Rand study). “…The proliferation of programs creates a high risk of a poor investment of DoD resources,” the study concludes [the Pentagon has to pay outside experts to figure this out?]. “Our report suggests that there is significant duplication of effort, both within and across branches of service,” Rand adds. “Without a centralized evidence base, we remain uncertain as a nation about which approaches work, which are ineffective, and which are—despite the best intent of their originators—harmful to servicemembers and their families.”