Nearly 1 in 5 US Army soldiers had mental illness before they enlisted: study
What!?
I don’t much about anything military, so but I quote this from the article:
“One reason for the rise in these figures may have been the rush to fill ranks during the Afghanistan and Iraq war years, with recruiters telling enlistees to not volunteer that they had mental health afflictions.”
(Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/20-army-enlistees-mental-disorder-study-article-1.1710644#ixzz2v9WZNDaS)
Are these recruiters getting money with every person enlisted through them? If so, WE NEED TO CUT THAT. How many mentally illed people UN-VOLUNTARILY were there too? If you can’t tell the people around you sometimes that you have a mental illness, then how are you going to tell a recruiter that is waving money and benefits at you.
I wanted to join the military. I stood crying in my living room to my husband about how I might think that the military was the only thing left for me. My life was shit. I was going to amount to nothing.. I was also in the not medicated, drinking, smoking, losing it, mind running, really really angry, happy one minute, bad thoughts zone, but thought about enlisting. I didn’t.
I didn’t want to put someone’s else life in my hands at times, when I couldn’t hold my own.
So, here I am..
“Rock Forever21, but she just turned thirty”
– Kayne West
p.s. I’m not 30. not yet anyways 🙂
Bipolar, Unemployed & Lost 
I didn’t know I was mentally ill when I joined up (USAF, May 2001-May 2007, honorable discharge), and I couldn’t risk finding out when I was in because I didn’t want to lose my top secret clearance. My job was the only thing that kept me from getting massively suicidal in a town I hated full of people I loathed. So yeah, I drank. A lot. I might have done other things that would’ve gotten me put into military prison had anyone found out. I had horrible sleep paralysis, and the general attitude was that I needed to, and I quote, ‘quit bringing my problems to work’. Um.
I’m still glad I made that choice to serve, because it saved my life at a time I had nowhere to go and was suicidal for the first time in my life. And I think that the mentally ill should be able to serve, and to be able to admit to their conditions so they can take care of themselves, AND their country as they see fit.
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wow Raeyn, thanks for that. Like I said to S.K, I never looked at it the other way.
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*nodnods* To be fair, it should not have to be the only job choice for non-rich people either. Part of my suicidal situation was trying to fund my way through community college ’cause one can’t get a ‘real’ job without a degree or connections (neither of which were an option, ’cause mentally ill, and poor). I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up (being only 32 now! *grins*), if anything, so going to college and blowing a lot of money on that when I didn’t know what I wanted to study seemed stupid. So really, vocation needs to quit being a dirty word in English vernacular. There should not be the insistence you put yourself into debt for a piece of seriously devalued paper. If I’d gone to college when I graduated and finished with a degree in 4 years (so 2004), I could have probably gotten a bog standard office job without too many problems. Someone graduating from high school now needs a MASTER’S degree for the same shit job. I know that any number of my co-workers were only in because it was the only way for them to get a college education to get a ‘real’ job, so.
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I hear where you are coming from, but I also have to say that these afflicted people should also have the right to represent our country. Just like I had a right to practice as Nurse. I held people’s lives in my hands in that capacity, and if I had been disallowed many people would have been denied my compassion.
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wow S.K. I didnt think of it that way! good point!
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Just like us. That is where we have to let go of stigma and be more accepting. Don’t stigmatize yourself either. You are just like me.
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