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Army seeks to build resilience in Families as well as Soldiers 090903
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PHOTO CAPTION: Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey meets with Soldiers during a visit to Fort Hood’s Resiliency Campus. (Photo by Rob McIlvaine, FMWRC Public Affairs)
Army seeks to build resilience in Families as well as Soldiers 090903
By Rob McIlvaine
FMWRC Public Affairs
FORT HOOD, Texas – “In a force where 60 percent of Soldiers are married, taking care of Families is more vital than ever,” Gen. George Casey, Army chief of staff, said recently during a visit to the Fort Hood Resiliency Campus in Texas.
Not surprisingly, with seven-plus years of sustained combat, Army leadership is seeking new or improved ways to meet the needs of those military men and women who have experienced increased levels of stress.
One response is the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, a program to build resilience not only physically but mentally, as well. CSF is designed to bring the emotional, social, spiritual and Family aspect of fitness to the same level of importance and cultural acceptance in the Army as physical fitness.
The Army currently faces increased rates of post-traumatic stress, substance abuse and suicide – all serious indicators of Soldier-stress levels. To alleviate this, Army leadership, through the Army Family Covenant, is committed to providing Families a strong, supportive environment where they can thrive.
Historically, and for obvious reason, physical fitness has been an integral part of a Soldier’s military career and the Army has heavily invested time and resources into maintaining a physically fit force.
The mission of CSF is to develop and institute a holistic, resilience-building fitness program for Soldiers, Family members and Army Civilians. The overarching goal is to provide individually-tailored skill training that leads to a balanced, healthy, self-confident force whose resilience and overall fitness enables them to thrive in this current environment and beyond.
The Army now recognizes that these additional dimensions of fitness are as important to readiness as physical health and fitness. CSF will develop a program to provide initial assessment and training of all of these dimensions to Soldiers upon enlistment.
This will be followed by additional training that is incorporated into Army schools, professional military education and deployment cycles.
“Stress isn’t going away,” said Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum, CSF director. “What we’re doing with this program is taking good people and making them better.”
Cornum, who holds a PhD in nutrition and biochemistry from Cornell, completed a general surgery internship at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in 1987. Since the Persian Gulf conflict – where she served as a flight surgeon, was shot down and captured by Iraqi forces – she began urologic surgery training in 1993 and then took command of the 28th Combat Support Hospital at Fort Bragg, N.C.
Kristen Clouse, along with her husband Pvt. Tim Clouse who recently joined the Army, was invited to meet with Gen. Casey at Fort Hood with other Soldiers and Family members to talk about the CSF program.
“If this program had been available before my dad left for Vietnam, he might have been better prepared,” Kristen said.
“General Casey asked the spouses mainly about how they handle deployment and how it affected the children. Of course, my husband has not deployed yet, but I did comment on how important the time between deployments could mean to Soldiers and their Families,” Kristen said. “I also told him I was thankful that my husband and I had a little over a year before his deployment because it is making the transition from civilian life to Army wife easier for me.”
Kristen also mentioned how important it is for the Soldier and spouse to experience things together.
“Marriages stay together when they grow together. My husband mentioned he took a test to assess any training he might need to increase his mental strength, so I definitely wanted to take the same test. Coming from a military Family I know it’s important to share, not only our hopes and fears, but anything that will help us to grow physically and mentally,” she said.
Families provide mission-essential capability, stability and continuity during war and peace, in support of Soldiers.
Cornum said Soldiers and Family members must be both physically and mentally fit if the Soldiers are going to be their best on the battlefield.
"If we could improve the resilience of the people before they had some adverse event, we might very well be able to have them view it as adverse, but not traumatic," Cornum said.
Although many think that everybody who enters combat gets post-traumatic stress, it’s not true, says Casey.
“Everybody who goes to combat gets stressed. But the vast majority of people who go to combat have a growth experience because while they’re exposed to something very, very difficult, they prevail," Casey said. "So the issue for us is, how do we give more people the skills so that more people have a growth experience?"
Comprehensive Soldier Fitness would equip soldiers ahead of time to deal with traumatic events, Cornum said.
"The best way to treat a heart attack is not CPR," she said. "The best way is to prevent the heart attack. It’s a lifestyle and culture change. And that’s how we should look at mental health. Look at it with a preventative model and enhanced health model, not a ‘waiting-till-we-need-therapy’ model."
Cornum said a "global assessment tool" is under development by the Army to help assess all dimensions of a Soldier, Family member and Army Civilian’s fitness. The tool is expected to be delivered across the Army this year.
CSF is expected to be delivered to Soldiers Army wide in October of 2009. Many of the program’s tools have been developed and tested regionally, including recently at Fort Hood where Casey toured the Resiliency Campus with Ft. Hood Commander Lt. Gen. Rick Lynch. The campus is Lynch’s answer to questions posed by Soldier spouses about quality Family time together.
Lynch, who will become Installation Management commander in November, will be in a position to expand his reach from Ft. Hood to the entire U.S. Army.
“The tour of the Resiliency Campus developed by Lynch may become a model for future CSF campuses,” Col. Jeff Short, MD and CSF team member said.
According to Short, CSF will work with the Fort Hood campus to learn from them, but both might very well learn from each other and incorporate best practices.
On this tour, Casey also witnessed Battlemind training, a psychological debriefing technique, at the Internet Café, and entered into a small group discussion with spouses, Army civilians, and Soldiers who have taken the online Global Assessment Tool (GAT).
The GAT is a questionnaire that is primarily used to determine an individual’s baseline and to link him or her to education and training that will increase their mental strength.
Because CSF will be rolled out in phases with continued modifications of the GAT, everyone will have the opportunity to help make sure the Army has it right.
Developed by subject matter experts from the U.S. military and civilian universities, the GAT, used at various times during a Soldier’s career, will help the Army determine which training is most effective in building strength in the five dimensions of strength: physical, emotional, social, Family, and spiritual.
“Smaller garrisons might not have a campus built,” Short said. “Rather, they may just have a CSF staff. The idea is to have one to three Master Resilience Trainers at each installation. CSF, after all, is about providing resources, not necessarily having a physical location where people can go.”
A potential CSF goal, Short said, is to build a CSF training school. The team may consider Fort Jackson for this, but for various reasons for right now it’s just an idea.
Col. Marsha C. Lilly is strategic communications chief for CSF.
“Most important, CSF is not just for Soldiers. Family members and Army civilians, during the second and third phase of the program’s implementation, will also have the opportunity to participate in the program. Exactly when these subsequent phases will begin is still being determined,” Lilly said.
But with the Association of the U.S. Army currently planning for the October symposium and 497 members of the Family Readiness Groups scheduled to be arriving, the Army is moving quickly to mount all three phases of Comprehensive Soldier Fitness – Gen. Casey’s idea to make sure that Soldiers, Families and Army civilians are prepared.
Currently, full implementation to the entire force, including the Guard and Reserve, is scheduled for this October. Availability for Family members and Army civilians is expected to begin October 2010.
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