Premature Return of Peace Corps Volunteers

Abstract

CONCERN for the individual volunteer, even as his number increases, remains one of the outstanding characteristics of the Peace Corps. The extensive participation of the mental health and public health professions in the selection, training, and overseas psychological support of the volunteer reflects this concern and may have helped to keep the rate of permature return as low as it is. To describe the care with which volunteers are finally chosen from the large pool of applicants would require a paper in itself, and we refer the interested reader to Hobbs (1) . Suffice it to say that applicants are carefully screened and matched to the requirements of their proposed project. They are then invited to the training site for an intensive 8to 12-week course in which the trainees are tested, interviewed, and observed in their performance and interactions. A psychiatrist meets with them in a series of five small informal, anticipatory guidance sessions, and more formally whenever indicated. They are evaluated medically to be certain they can meet the physical demands of the project. Those who successfully complete this arduous training phase become the Peace Corps voilunteers. [For a description of the development of the program for preventive psychiatry in the Peace Corps, see Leopold and Duhl (2, 3) and Kramer and Frank (4). A manual for psychiatric consultants including suggestions for the anticipatory guidance sessions was prepared by Caplan (5) and published by the Peace Corps.] During the 17-month period ending January 1963 covered in this report, the Peace Corps placed 3,805 volunteers in 43 countries. Of this number only 116 returned home from 28 countries. This represents 3 percent of the volunteers in the field at the end of that period. However, if we correct for the differences in time abroad, the rate has been nearly constant at 54 returning volunteers per 1,000 man-years of overseas service, or 5.4 percent per annum. Adding all the volunteers overseas during each month gives the total number of man-months, which divided by 12 converts to the number of man-years. Although some volunteers have been abroad for the full 17 months, more than half have been there only 5 months. The total number of man-years of experience was 2,152.3 during this period. The number of volunteers returninig each month for all reasons has varied from none to as many as one a day in January 1963. However, with some lag this number has been roughly proportional to the total number of volunteers sent overseas, with a slight rise during the last 2 months (fig. 1). The following observations may be made on the basis of data accumulated after a careful Dr. Thomson is a lecturer in the department of psychological medicine, University of Edinburgh. He formerly was a clinical and research fellow at the Massachusetts General Hospital on Peace Corps assignment. Dr. English is chief psychiatrist, Medical Programs Division, Peace Corps, Washington, D.C., detailed from National Institute of Mental Health, Public Health Service; and clinical assistant professor in psychiatry, George Washington University, Washington, D.C. Dr. Victor Kovner, Peace Corps physician in Venezuela, and Dr. Mark Beaubien, Peace Corps physician in Malaysia, assisted in the preparation of this paper before going overseas.