Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration

CMHS Consumer Affairs E-News
March 16, 2006, Vol. 06-29

Stigma in the Military: Strategies to Reduce Mental Health Stigma Among Veterans and Active Duty Personnel

Register to Participate

The SAMHSA Resource Center to Address Discrimination and Stigma Associated With Mental Illness invites you to participate in a free teleconference training titled, "Stigma in the Military: Strategies to Reduce Mental Health Stigma Among Veterans and Active Duty Personnel."

Date: Thursday, March 30, 2006
Time: 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM (Eastern Time)

To participate in this training teleconference, please complete the online registration form located at http://www.promoteacceptance.samhsa.gov/archtelPDF/EBIReport_FINAL_Tagged.pdf. Additional training information appears below. For slide presentation materials, please refer to the Presentations section of this announcement. Should you have any difficulty registering or retrieving presentation files, please contact a technical assistance representative by e-mail at promoteacceptance@samhsa.hhs.gov or by telephone at 1-800-540-0320. Please pass this invitation along to interested friends and colleagues. Please note: Registration for this teleconference will close at 5:00 p.m., Eastern time, on Wednesday, March 29, 2006.

Training Summary

"Stigma is a real problem. It's a societal issue, but it is much more pronounced in the military." - Col. Thomas Burke, Director of Mental Health Policy, U.S. Department of Defense, Stars and Stripes, July 22, 2005

Like their civilian counterparts, many active-duty and veteran United States military personnel are faced with the prospect of having a mental illness. However, unlike ordinary citizens, the situations under which these individuals work and live impact profoundly upon their ability to maintain mental health. Soldiers training for and participating in combat experience high levels of stress that heighten anxiety and increase the chances for depression. Combat trauma, whether experienced in the form of bodily injury or fatigue from a constant exposure to threat, increases the likelihood of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the possibility for poor performance or inappropriate conduct.

The impact of military reality on individual mental health is complicated further by the pronounced stigma associated with mental illness within military communities. Service members frequently cite fear of personal embarrassment, fear of disappointing comrades, fear of losing the opportunity for career advancement, and fear of dishonorable discharge as motivations to hide the symptoms of mental illness from colleagues, friends and family. This silence and the attitudes and perceptions perpetuating it pose a significant challenge to those charged with making sure that the United States' fighting force is improving itself and taking care of its own members.

In response to this challenge, advocates from both within and outside the U.S. military and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs are working to counter stigma and reverse the fear that causes soldiers and veterans to associate mental illness with personal and professional failure. Some programs, like the U.S. Air Force's suicide prevention initiative, provide a comprehensive approach to mental health education, training, and illness prevention that is made visible and acceptable inside military communities. Other programs seek to explore less stigmatizing methods of identifying illnesses and delivering mental health services by taking advantage of communication tools such as the Internet. Still other programs seek to promote the value of talking about illness by encouraging peer recognition and support for recovery from mental health problems.

Training Goals

Provide information on the anti-stigma component of the U.S. Air Force's suicide prevention program.

Discuss stigma reduction efforts within the Veteran's Administration

Discuss the value of increasing peer support program efforts Presentations

Presentation materials will be made available 1 to 3 days prior to the scheduled training event. Please return to this web site for updates.

Event Speakers

Lt. Col. Rick L. Campise, Ph.D., ABPP, BSC, US Air Force Lt. Col. Campise currently serves as Chief, Air Force Deployment Behavioral Health and Chief, Air Force Substance Abuse Prevention. He is revising the Air Force's mental health deployment teams, restructuring its combat stress management program, and enhancing its treatment of deployment issues throughout the deployment cycle. He also chairs the Air Force Deployment Behavioral Health Working Group which oversees 19 deployment subcommittees. He served as the Chief, Air Force Suicide Prevention Program (AFSPP) from 2001-2005. Lt. Col. Campise was selected as a co-winner of the 2004 American Association of Suicidologists Presidential Citation for Outstanding Contributions in Suicide Prevention, was an Air Force finalist for the 1999 Joint Chiefs of Staff Award for Excellence in Military Medicine, and received the 1997 American Psychological Association Division 19 Mid-Career Military Psychologist of the Year Award.

Moe Armstrong, M.B.A., M.A.
Mr. Armstrong is Director of Consumer and Family Affairs at the Vinfen Corporation, a mental health services provider in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In addition to being a veteran and self-identified consumer of mental health services, he has served as past Chair of the Veterans' Subcommittee for the NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) National Board. He also co-founded (with his wife, Naomi) the Peer Educators Project, a program that relies on people with mental illnesses and their families to teach others how to live with mental illnesses. Mr. Armstrong has written extensively about his experiences with mental illness both during and after his tour of duty in Vietnam. These writings are available on his web site.

Susan McCutcheon, RN, Ed.D.
Dr. McCutcheon is the Program Manager for Special Projects in the Office of Mental Health Services at U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). In addition to being a registered nurse, she holds a doctorate in education and has coordinated a program of network telemedicine for the VA Healthcare System of Ohio.

Training Sponsor

This teleconference is sponsored by the SAMHSA Resource Center to Address Discrimination and Stigma (ADS Center), a project of the Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The session is free to all participants.

About the SAMHSA ADS Center SAMHSA's Resource Center to Address Discrimination and Stigma (ADS Center) helps people design, implement and operate programs that reduce discrimination and stigma associated with mental illnesses. With the most up-to-date research and information, the ADS Center helps individuals, organizations and governments counter such discrimination and stigma in the community, in the workplace, and in the media
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The Center for Mental Health Services is a component of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, United States Department of Health and Human Services.