Word: chiarelli
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Army's corps of substance-abuse counselors is hundreds short of the number of trained personnel needed. "I have been pounding the system to say we have got to sit down and determine what we need after eight years of war," Chiarelli said. That shortage has made it tougher "to handle what I think is a higher rate of substance abuse today than eight years ago." Why is it higher? "I think it's only natural you're going to see that as soldiers come back [from war], you know, with the dwell time that they have [before returning...
...service has recently rewritten its 51-page Army Suicide Prevention pamphlet, and created numerous task forces and suicide-prevention programs. It has also begun letting soldiers seek help for substance abuse without telling their commanders. "We keep those substance-abuse counseling services open late at night and on weekends," Chiarelli said, "so people can make those appointments without their chain of command knowing...
...Soldiers who are suffering from posttraumatic stress are six times more likely to commit suicide than those that are not," General Peter Chiarelli told the House Armed Services Committee on Dec. 10. "The greatest single debilitating injury of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan is posttraumatic stress." Nearly 1 in 5 soldiers - more than 300,000 - comes home from the wars reporting symptoms of PTSD. Army officials also acknowledge that substance abuse, fueled by repeated combat tours, and a war-created shortage of mental-health professionals, contribute to mental ills that can lead to suicide...
...Chiarelli, the Army's top suicide fighter, finds the challenge daunting. "This is horrible," the Army vice chief of staff said recently. "The challenge of suicides," added the former top U.S. commander in Iraq, "is without a doubt the toughest that I have had to tackle in 37-plus years in the Army...
...Chiarelli has singled out abuse of alcohol and prescription drugs by soldiers as a mental-health issue that can lead to suicide. "I think there's a link to substance abuse in some of the issues we're seeing," Chiarelli said last month. A recent Army study shows that the percentage of soldiers in Afghanistan taking antidepressants and other mental-health drugs nearly tripled - from 3.5% to 9.8% - between their first and third deployments...