The Best Years of Our Lives

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Huan Yi
Member Ascendant

since 2004-10-12

Posts 6688
Waukegan

0 posted 2007-12-21 06:06 PM

.

Coming back from work I heard a public radio piece
that spoke of how a survey found that a significant
number of enlisted soldiers serving in Iraq planned
to get a divorce when they got back to the States.
The program presented this as indicative of the
psychological problems the soldiers were suffering
yet I’m not so sure.   There was movie done after
WWII called The Best Years of Our Lives and it
was about not only the problems returning soldiers had
being back in the states but the inability of many of those
then around them had grasping that they had ever been
away to anything  different from the world
in which they had always lived and viewed
the outside world.   This has always been a problem;
whose problem is a matter of perspective.

.

Grinch
Member Elite

since 2005-12-31

Posts 2929
Whoville

1 posted 2007-12-21 07:02 PM

Huan,

It seems that the rise in divorce rates is among officers:

quote:
In the year to September 2002, 1.9% of percent of married Army officers got divorced, along with 3.1% of married enlisted soldiers, according to Pentagon figures cited by Reuters.

In 2003, when the Iraq war began, the figure for officers rose to 3.3% while for enlisted soldiers it fell to 2.8%.

The following year, the figures were 6% and 3.5% respectively.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4075270.stm

It would be interesting to know how those figures compare with non-military divorce rates, have you come across any figures?

Huan Yi
Member Ascendant

since 2004-10-12

Posts 6688
Waukegan

2 posted 2007-12-21 07:23 PM

Grinch,

No, I was only in an instant
responding to the program.
I do know when I came back
I was different which hardly anyone
beyond my parents bothered to notice.

John

rwood
Member Elite

since 2000-02-29

Posts 3793
Tennessee

3 posted 2007-12-22 08:20 AM

How sad, but I realize it's not a new problem.

When the soldiers from Ft. Riley, Kansas were scheduled to deploy during Desert Storm, a storm of marriages took place.

I couldn't even keep up with how many weddings I attended.

The soldiers were gone for 5 months, and I "think" every marriage I witnessed was either annulled or the couples divorced very shortly after returning home.

Some soldiers received the "Dear John/Jane" letters from the new spouses, who stated they'd made a mistake and couldn't wait or go through the stress.

I think it's an impulse issue, on both sides, for hasty grooms & brides to be before they leave out on a mission, with so many fears involved.

but for those who are more seasoned in marriage, there are still deep fears, pray your mate returns, yes, but one does have to get to know the person again, and sometimes the person may have painfully become a perfect stranger.

TomMark
Member Elite

since 2007-07-27

Posts 2133
LA,CA

4 posted 2007-12-22 10:19 AM

The changed was not only their marriage but their view of the world and attitude toward life.

Grinch
Member Elite

since 2005-12-31

Posts 2929
Whoville

5 posted 2007-12-22 11:20 AM

quote:
The changed was not only their marriage but their view of the world and attitude toward life.

Do you mean just in the case of officers or divorcees in general?

Grinch
Member Elite

since 2005-12-31

Posts 2929
Whoville

6 posted 2007-12-22 12:17 PM

“By now almost everyone has heard that the national divorce rate is close to 50% of all marriages.”

(Taken from Barbara Whitehead and David Popenoe's The State of Our Unions (2004))

Are these figures correct? If so the divorce rates among servicemen seems to tell a different story.

TomMark
Member Elite

since 2007-07-27

Posts 2133
LA,CA

7 posted 2007-12-22 12:18 PM

Everyone, officers and soldiers, in general.

Grinch
Member Elite

since 2005-12-31

Posts 2929
Whoville

8 posted 2007-12-22 12:44 PM

So you’re saying that all divorces, military and non-military, can be attributed to a change in the way people view marriage, the world and life in general.

I can’t argue with that.

TomMark
Member Elite

since 2007-07-27

Posts 2133
LA,CA

9 posted 2007-12-22 12:49 PM

You, Grinch, time for you the behave bad, huh?!

.
I meant the military personnel. They have seen death so they might re-evaluate their life and the meaning and change their priorities. Or a misbehave after shocking confusion of the war.

Grinch
Member Elite

since 2005-12-31

Posts 2929
Whoville

10 posted 2007-12-22 01:15 PM

quote:
They have seen death so they might re-evaluate their life and the meaning and change their priorities. Or a misbehave after shocking confusion of the war.

True, but equally their experience might reduce the rate of divorce , the original post by Huan suggested that the divorce rate among enlisted men was rising and he was wondering why that might be. The evidence however seems to suggest that military personnel are less likely to get divorced than non-military personnel. Could the reasons you give for large divorce rates (that don’t seem to exist) explain why military personnel are less likely to get divorced than the average Joe?

TomMark
Member Elite

since 2007-07-27

Posts 2133
LA,CA

11 posted 2007-12-22 01:29 PM

Done it before the war.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-06-07-soldier-divorces_x.htm

I'll check for more serious data in the net.

Grinch
Member Elite

since 2005-12-31

Posts 2929
Whoville

12 posted 2007-12-22 01:46 PM

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Benjamin Disraeli

quote:
3,325 Army officers' marriages ended in divorce — up 78% from 2003

And guess what if you increase the number of soldiers next year the number of divorces will magically rise too!

To get a true view of the situation what you need to do is work out what percentage of soldiers are getting divorced regardless of the number of soldiers.

quote:
In the year to September 2002, 1.9% of percent of married Army officers got divorced, along with 3.1% of married enlisted soldiers, according to Pentagon figures cited by Reuters.

In 2003, when the Iraq war began, the figure for officers rose to 3.3% while for enlisted soldiers it fell to 2.8%.

The following year, the figures were 6% and 3.5% respectively.

hush
Senior Member

since 2001-05-27

Posts 1653
Ohio, USA

13 posted 2007-12-24 02:44 PM

I heard a public radio piece about how troops on recent deployments to Iraq are showing an increase in psychological and behavioral problems, and the military is diagnosing them with 'personality disorders' rather than PTSD in order to qualify their problems as preexisting disorders. In so doing, Uncle Sam gets out of footing the bill for their treatment. Cute, huh?

Grinch
Member Elite

since 2005-12-31

Posts 2929
Whoville

14 posted 2007-12-24 03:59 PM

quote:
the military is diagnosing them with 'personality disorders' rather than PTSD in order to qualify their problems as preexisting disorders. In so doing, Uncle Sam gets out of footing the bill for their treatment. Cute, huh?

Or it could just be that they have personality disorders according to specified medical criteria and are being diagnosed correctly.

I’m not being facetious here, the criteria for PTSD has changed several times over the years, the last change I’m aware of lowered the criteria which increased the number of suffers by 50%. If the threshold criteria has been amended upwards again recently it could explain the results.

Is it not the Governments fault either way?

Well, yes and no.

You could argue that the government has put pressure on the medical community to change the criteria for diagnosis, but then you’d have to wonder why they didn’t apply that pressure on previous occasions when the changing criteria would have an obvious increase in cost.

Then again it doesn’t take a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon to work out that in a perfect world the government should foot the bill to treat any disorder attributable to action, even if the disorder was only the catalyst that sparked an existing disorder.

The situation does raise a few questions though, which might in fact instigate a change in policy.

If I was an American I’d be pushing my representative in government to ask why the military is enlisting people with personality disorders in the first place!

Don’t they screen for that sort of thing, if they do aren‘t they admitting negligence by claiming the disorder was pre-existing, pre-existing sounds pretty much like “we failed to spot it“ to me? If they don’t check isn’t that just as damming - if they just hand a gun or let anyone in without a physiological check isn’t that a disaster waiting to happen?

hush
Senior Member

since 2001-05-27

Posts 1653
Ohio, USA

15 posted 2008-01-02 01:52 AM

'Don’t they screen for that sort of thing, if they do aren‘t they admitting negligence by claiming the disorder was pre-existing, pre-existing sounds pretty much like “we failed to spot it“ to me?'

Exactly.

And have you ever taken a psychology class? There are enough personality disorders that you could probably shove just about anybody into their borders if need be. It doesn't necessarily ahve anything to do with PTSD- rather than saying the patient does not meet PTSD criteria, they government swiftly eliminates the relevance of PTSD in the first place. If the patient has a pre-existing personality disorder, then that's all they need.

And BTW, I don't know what has been done in terms of revising PTSD criteria in the past, but in, say, 2000, with our troops much more adequetely staffed and no major war going on, there is a lack traumatic circumstances to cause PTSD in the first place. The rise in troop infractions for various acting out (i.e., opposing authority figures) would correlate to the wartime situation, which would correlate to an increase in PTSD... i mean, personality disorders.

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