Section III

For soldiers war can have a huge toll on there health physically and mentally, soldiers are affected in many ways by what they see and what goes on during the war. Being at constant risk for death or injury can cause troops to become immensely distressed. An uncommon cause of stress for soldiers is MST also known as military sexual trauma which is any sexual harassment or sexual assault that occurs in the military. Twenty three percent of women report being sexually assaulted in the military, fifty five percent of women and thirty eight percent of men have experienced sexual harassment when in the military (Overview of mental health effects). Some combat stressors that soldiers face are seeing dead bodies, being shot at, being attacked or ambushed, receiving rocket or mortar fire, know someone killed or seriously injured. Around ninety percent of army troops and marines are affected by these factors (Hoge).

Mental health care is a serious problem that soldiers have to face; the biggest part to this problem is the amount of service members that are receiving the proper care that they need. Once the troops return from Iraq or Afghanistan they are given a survey that contains mental health questions. Based on the survey the service has found that close to nineteen percent of troops stationed in Iraq have a mental health problem and eleven percent of troops stationed in Afghanistan have a mental health problem (Overview of mental health effects). There are still service members that do not apply for mental health treatment, some reasons for this are they feel they may be seen as weak, they fear they may be treated differently, or that others may lose confidence in them. This problem still continues and has continuously affected our beloved service members.
Another problem that veterans face is the mistakes that occur in the digital medical record system, used to track wounded soldiers. Because not all hospitals use this system it has caused thousands of wounded soldiers to endure long waits for treatment. Since they can not track the status of wounded soldiers from various locations they are less likely to learn from the mistakes they’ve made (Nixon). The Joint Patient Tracking Application cost around three hundred and twenty thousand dollars to develop and about two million dollars a year to operate. Because not all soldiers have digital medical records it has complicated an already frustrating situation. The wounded soldiers who still rely on paper records have to wait long periods for appointments because their records can not be found or were never transferred. Veterans also face delays in receiving rehabilitation defense officials do not use the system to assign specialists to centers that have the biggest backlogs (Urbina). “The D.O.D’s failure to share data and track patient records is truly a matter of life and death,” Senator Patty Murray states. “This isn’t an isolated case, but a system-wide failure”.

This system was created to make seamless the transition of soldiers who have been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan as they relocated to hospitals statewide. But only thirteen out of seventy military treatment centers in the US use it, even though it was mandated by the Pentagon more than two years ago (agency documents).