Saturday, February 25, 2012

Military Psychiatry and the Command Structure

It is my personal opinion that the military has some ethics issues regarding the use of psychiatry to be employed in many times of military discrepancies in the preferential interest in a candidate or member for active duty continuity.
I have read the story today in the NY Times regarding Capt. Susan Carlson who was given a diagnosis of a "Personality Disoder NOS" after the recommendation of her own command structure to the psychiatrist.

I suggest that there may be conflict of interest any time that the command structure of the psychiatrist's medical care falls under the same command structure of the military personell that are being sent for evaluation.

I suggest that there might be a need to either outsource some of the psychiatric care to civilian for impartial and professional evaluation and treatment recommendations.

Another idea would be to start a completely new branch of the Military for Mental Health personell and call it the Fitness Corps.

This way there would be no overlapping command structure and perhaps a more ethical avenue could be employed for evaluation, treatment and in some rare cases I hope, dismissal of personell from their active duty service.

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