Stop medicalizing the mission

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ken Falke, a 21-year veteran of the U.S. Navy Special Operations Explosive Ordnance Disposal community, is a serial entrepreneur and the chairman and founder of Boulder Crest Foundation, an organization focused on the teachings of posttraumatic growth. He is also the author of “Struggle Well: Thriving in the Aftermath of Trauma” and “Lead Well: 10 Steps to Successful and Sustainable Leadership.”

I am tired of hearing that the Navy’s problems can be solved by the mental-health community.

Not because mental-health professionals are unimportant. They are not. I have spent the last 24 years working with warriors, first responders, and their families suffering in the aftermath of trauma. I believe in good clinicians and good treatment and making it easier for people to ask for help. But there is a dangerous idea taking hold: if enough sailors are struggling, the answer must be to put more mental-health professionals around them.

A recent War on the Rocks article, “Mental Health Is a Warfighting Readiness Problem for the U.S. Navy,” makes legitimate observations about exhaustion, declining morale, deployment demands, and sustained operations. But expanding mental-health capacity, including a proposed 250-member civilian auxiliary, is not the answer.

Some sailors genuinely need professional care. They may be dealing with depression, anxiety, trauma, substance use, suicidal thoughts, or other conditions requiring treatment. They should receive that care without stigma or fear that asking for help will end their careers. But not every problem created by exhaustion, isolation, poor morale, or a toxic command climate is a mental-health disorder. Some are organizational failures. Some are failures of judgment, communication, accountability, or basic leadership.

I know a little about long deployments. I spent about two-thirds of my 21-year Navy career deployed. In 1988, I deployed aboard USS John F. Kennedy. Near the end of that deployment, we shot down two Libyan MiGs. The ship was extended, and I missed the birth of my first daughter. My family will never get that moment back.

My family remembers the sacrifice. We remember the frustration. We remember wanting me to be home, but I don’t remember thinking I had a mental-health problem. I understood that I was a sailor, that we had a mission, and that sometimes the mission demanded sacrifices I didn’t want to make. My family paid a price for my service that none of us can get back.

My experiences are long over, and they certainly weren’t worse than what today’s sailors face, but they give me perspective on what prolonged deployment, uncertainty, exhaustion, and separation from family actually feel like.

The Navy exists to deploy. Deployment is not a design flaw. It is the mission. Hardship does not make people immune to mental illness, but neither should hardship automatically be medicalized.

The harder question is whether we are teaching sailors how to struggle well — how to move through adversity, recognize when demands become unreasonable, and know when ordinary hardship crosses into a condition requiring professional care.

A psychologist can help a sailor process trauma. A psychiatrist can treat mental illness. A counselor can save a life. But none of them can fix a ship that has been deployed too long, repair a broken command climate, create meaningful purpose, or replace a chief petty officer who knows his people well enough to recognize when something changes. Those are leadership responsibilities.

I also reject the way the Navy uses the word resilience. Resilience has become a four-letter word. We should be teaching something harder: struggling well, learning from adversity, and growing because of what we learn. This is the essence of posttraumatic growth.

The Greatest Generation understood something we seem to be forgetting. The Greatest Generation were not immune to trauma. Many carried terrible wounds home, and some never recovered. We should never romanticize their suffering nor shame anyone who needs help, but they understood duty, responsibility, and that the person next to you was counting on you.

Imagine one of those sailors walking aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln today. I suspect he would understand the exhaustion, fear, separation, and uncertainty. He might ask one question: “What’s the mission?” Then, after hearing the answer: “What are we waiting for?” This doesn’t mean today’s sailors are weak. It means we should ask whether we have forgotten how to prepare people for hardship and lead them through it.

And we need to be careful about how we talk about this because our enemies are listening. China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and others study our public debates. They watch our media and social media. They study our morale, leadership, retention, readiness and public confidence.

When we repeatedly describe sailors as exhausted, demoralized, psychologically damaged, and unable to perform without expanded mental-health infrastructure, our adversaries hear something different. They hear vulnerability.

That doesn’t mean we hide problems. Militaries that refuse to acknowledge problems eventually pay a higher price. But there is a difference between honestly confronting weakness and publicly defining ourselves by weakness.

So, if sailors are exhausted, disconnected, and losing faith in their leadership, we should ask: What happened to the leadership? Who knows these sailors? Who is walking the decks? Who is listening? Who is asking whether the operational tempo is sustainable? Who is holding commanders accountable?

Mental-health professionals should absolutely be part of the Navy’s support system. They just shouldn’t become the system or be used to conceal failures that belong to command.

And to the sailors aboard Lincoln, I would say this: Look around you. You are deployed. You are doing something most Americans don’t have the courage, discipline or opportunity to do. You are serving your country. Gather around each other. Take care of the sailor next to you. Complain to each other if you must and remember, a bitching sailor is a happy sailor — then get back to the mission.

Because back home, millions of Americans sleep safely in their beds because ships like yours are at sea. We are proud of you. You should be proud of yourselves. You are not passengers on that ship. You are the United States Navy.

Struggle well together. Take care of each other. Grow from what you endure. Ask for help when you need it.

And then, get back to the mission.