The military mental health system failed Sgt. John M. Russell, and it failed the five men he allegedly killed, according to mental health expert Robert Goodale.
It’s too early to know exactly who is to blame for the killings, but mental health resources for troops are “not adequate,” said Goodale, director of behavioral mental health with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Citizen-Soldier Support Program.
Goodale said he doesn’t know if the Army “broke” Russell, as the soldier’s father contended in a television interview on Tuesday. The facts are still being determined.
“Certainly the stresses must have contributed greatly to his mental state,” he said. “What it might be is the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
Goodale said military mental health services are a lot better than they have been in the past and cited the effort the military is making to improve those services. However, he said military culture still sees getting help as a sign of weakness.
“They don’t want to be seen as weak, so they stuff it and stuff it and it pops out,” said Goodale, who had worked previously with Navy Cmdr. Charles Springle, a fellow mental health professional and one of the victims.
Russell, based in Bamberg, Germany, has been charged in the Monday deaths of five fellow servicemembers after he allegedly wrested a gun from an armed escort as he was being removed from the mental health clinic and then returned to the clinic and opened fire, according to The Associated Press.
Russell’s father, Wilburn Russell, said Tuesday that his son was undergoing stressful mental tests that he didn’t understand were merely tests, “so they broke him.”
The mental health clinic in Baghdad did more harm than good for Russell, his dad told Texas TV station KXII.
“The purpose of the stress clinic is to find out what will break your spirit, what will break your will and one way to do it is to tell them, ‘That’s it. You don’t belong in the military. Get out of here,’ ” Wilburn Russell told the TV station.
The military, however, refused to discuss Wilburn Russell’s comments because the incident is under investigation.
“Until those facts are brought out, I would not be able to address that type of question,” Lt. Col. David Patterson, a spokesman with Multi-National Corps–Iraq, said Wednesday.
Patterson refrained from discussing specifics on why Russell — with just weeks left on his deployment — was not medically evacuated from Iraq when his chain of command became concerned with his behavior.
For a common mental health issue in a noncrisis situation, individuals would only be medically evacuated from a deployed environment after they underwent treatment downrange and it was determined that they needed to be transferred to the next level of care for continued treatment, said Dr. Daphne Brown, chief of the behavioral health division at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. Brown did not want to specifically address the Russell case.
The Landstuhl hospital is a stopover for troubled troops from downrange being treated for mental health issues.
Russell, 44, was on his third tour in Iraq and had been deployed twice before to other locations.
Noncommissioned troops on their third and fourth deployments are more than twice as likely to have mental health problems as NCOs serving on their first deployment, according to the latest Army report on the mental health of deployed soldiers.
Four soldiers, including two from the Grafenwöhr, Germany-based 172nd Infantry Brigade, and one sailor died after the incident at Camp Liberty. Russell was taken into custody.
Russell, assigned to the 54th Engineer Battalion, has been charged with five counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault in the shootings, the AP reported.
As a result of the shooting, the Army has launched an investigation to determine if it needs more people and facilities downrange to deal with combat stress.
Russell had several stresses, his father told the news station. Russell had a house built last summer in Sherman, Texas, is paying a $1,500 a month mortgage, has a father-in-law sick with cancer, has a son with cysts on his liver and his own father recently underwent surgery to receive an artificial stomach.
At least since 2003, soldiers have been given health screenings both before and after deployments. In 2005, the Army began using post-deployment health reassessments to screen soldiers about three to four months after returning from war zones. The three-part process for the follow-up reassessments has soldiers undergoing stress resiliency training, filling out forms asking about physical and behavioral health concerns and speaking one-on-one with health-care providers, according to an Army news release.
Having last redeployed from Iraq in October 2006, Russell presumably received a post-deployment health reassessment.
“Soldiers with stress problems may be reluctant to seek the help they need,” Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker said in a news release dated March 24, 2008. “The PDHRA bypasses this reluctance or stigma by bringing the medical system directly to the soldier.”
Last year, the Army medical system in Europe added 65 behavioral health staff members, said Steve Davis, a spokesman with Europe Regional Medical Command.
“There is a concentrated and ongoing effort to make sure soldiers at the grass-roots level have access to help if they need it,” Davis said. “There are resources available.”
Stars and Stripes reporter Geoff Ziezulewicz contributed to this story.
