Military mental health training: building resilience

Abstract

For learning to take place with any kind of efficiency students must be motivated. To be motivated, they must become interested. And they become interested when they are actively working on projects which they can relate to their values and goals in life. Gus Tuberville, President, Penn College Introduction There is no debate that combat places tremendous psychological and physical demands on those involved. And as we learn more about how combat affects the psychological well-being of those involved, a set of central questions emerge. What can we do to prepare service members for the psychological demands of combat? What can we do to sustain the mental health and well-being of those deployed in a combat environment? What can we do to facilitate the return of these service members from the combat environment to home? In short, what do service members need to know about how combat can affect them? In response to these questions, the US Army developed the Battlemind Training System, a mental health resilience building program (US Army Medical Command, 2007). This system established several fundamental principles of mental health training, identified key implementation principles, and defined several important terms. Throughout this chapter, the Battlemind Training System will be used as an exemplar to highlight how a military mental health training program can be created that employs theses principles of mental health training and implementation.