Combat Stress Conference Works For Our War Fighters, Veterans, and Families

The 15th Annual Military and Civilian International Combat Stress Conference was born of the first Persian Gulf conflict. As a commanding officer of a General Hospital Section in California, I experienced having 95% of the hospital personnel deployed over the time of the conflict. The experience allowed me to see firsthand, prior to mobilization and after all had returned, that military staff was not prepared for this rapid deployment.

As a result, people experienced a variety of problems, ranging from medical and family issues to financial, religious, and vocational concerns. In order to prevent this from occurring in the future, I approached BG Richard Lynch and sought approval to develop a program called the Human Assistance Rapid Response Team (HARRT) as well as a yearly conference on combat stress, where we can train people on how to use the HARRT protocol and deal with other various combat stress issues. BG Lynch approved the project, and today what started as a two day conference in the basement auditorium of Pendleton Naval Hospital has grown into a seven day conference. It is the longest running and one of the best conferences on combat stress in the world.

People from around the country and abroad attended and spoke at this year’s conference. The focus this year was on family support, as well as the various issues related to combat stress. Three members of Congress (Congressman Bob Filner, D-California; Congressman Brian Bilbray, R-California; Congresswoman Susan Davis, D-California) attended and made statements supportive of the work the conference has addressed. There were renowned speakers that shared vital information on a wide variety of topics. We also received letters of support from many representatives of the government and military, including General Peter Pace, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with wishes for a successful conference.

Although the HARRT program was previously presented to a policy and planning group at the Pentagon headed up by 10 2-star generals and approved for implementation, it has never been fully utilized. The HARRT interviewing process not only identifies family and military personnel’s readiness for deployment in general, but addresses their psychological readiness as well. It has the potential to identify suicide ideation and possible homicide tendencies.

Currently there is renewed interest by some military and civilian organizations to develop the HARRT program. This renewed attempt to fully utilize the HARRT instrument is caused by similar situations that caused the system to be created 15 years ago.

The Combat Stress Conference has also caused other organizations to run similar conferences, such as the Marines' first combat stress conference in June 2007. Both the HARRT program and the International Combat Stress Conference have had their adversaries due to political, rather than professional, motivations. An attitude of “if it’s not in my house it’s no good” has prevailed over the past 15 years.

When the Chairman of the Pentagon Policy and Planning Committee made the statement to implement the HARRT program and asked, “Why is this program being developed by a Reserve Officer and not by our full time people?”, it was its kiss of death. Since the founding military organization decided to discontinue the International Combat Conference in 2006 and asked the founding officers, now retired, to continue it on their own as civilians, there has been resistance by some of the active military to the conference. This attitude has prevented military and civilian government staff, whose job it is to work with our military personnel and their families, from obtaining critical information they need to be as effective as possible.

People working in the area of veterans' issues (and specifically combat stress) need to realize that all of us, civilian and military, are in this together. Everyone must cooperate, because the numbers of military and civilian personnel that will need service is far beyond what one group can provide. There is no room for people who want to enhance their own status by creating duplicate programs in their name and delaying services from existing programs that are in place and effective. As our country’s name indicates, we need to function as a “United” group dedicated to providing service above self and identify and weed out people whose philosophy is self above service.