Commander Mark C. Russell joins us on BTFL to expose the harsh realities of mental healthcare with the military. A former Marine turned psychologist; Mark shares his insights into the historical patterns of neglecting lessons from past wars. This episode will shatter preconceived notions and reframe your understanding of mental health in the military.
Tune in to understand why mental health care in the military is not just necessary, but crucial and how the military could potentially lead the way in addressing the stigmatization of mental health in society.
Tune into our CHW Streaming Radio and the full lineup at cominghomewell.com
Download on Apple Play and Google Play
Online-Therapy.com ~ Life Changing Therapy Click here for a 20% discount on your first month.
Donna’s Links
Website: www.rebel-llc.com Consulting/Coaching
Book: Warrior to Patriot Citizen (2017)
Blog: Taking Off The Armor
IG: @thetransitioningwarrior
Twitter: @wtpc
FB: The Transitioning Warrior
Jay’s Links
Website: https://j2servantleadership.com/
Book: Breaking Average (2020)
Thank you for listening! Be sure to SHARE, LIKE and leave us a REVIEW!
Commander Mark C. Russell joins us on BTFL to expose the harsh realities of mental healthcare with the military. A former Marine turned psychologist; Mark shares his insights into the historical patterns of neglecting lessons from past wars. This episode will shatter preconceived notions and reframe your understanding of mental health in the military.
Tune in to understand why mental health care in the military is not just necessary, but crucial and how the military could potentially lead the way in addressing the stigmatization of mental health in society.
Tune into our CHW Streaming Radio and the full lineup at cominghomewell.com
Download on Apple Play and Google Play
Online-Therapy.com ~ Life Changing Therapy Click here for a 20% discount on your first month.
Donna’s Links
Website: www.rebel-llc.com Consulting/Coaching
Book: Warrior to Patriot Citizen (2017)
Blog: Taking Off The Armor
IG: @thetransitioningwarrior
Twitter: @wtpc
FB: The Transitioning Warrior
Jay’s Links
Website: https://j2servantleadership.com/
Book: Breaking Average (2020)
Thank you for listening! Be sure to SHARE, LIKE and leave us a REVIEW!
Welcome to Beyond the Frontline podcast, where your hosts, US Air Force veterans Donna Hofmeier and Jay Johnson, will help you transition from the front line to the home front. Listen every other Wednesday, as they will bring great conversations, resources, tips and feel good stories that will resonate and relate. Now here's your hosts, Donna Hofmeier and Jay Johnson.
Speaker 2:Welcome back everybody to another episode of Beyond the Frontline. I'm one of your co-host, jay Johnson, and as always, I am thankful for our parent company coming home well, and I'm in studio with a couple amazing individuals, but I'm not going to introduce our guest. I'm going to allow that to the one you've come accustomed to, the one that banters me, the one that gives me grief and the one that has fun at my expense, which I welcome. I tend to tee it up for her, the one and only Miss Donna Hofmeier. Donna, what's going on?
Speaker 3:You know you love it.
Speaker 2:I didn't deny it, did I.
Speaker 3:No, and I know that your girlfriend thinks it keeps you in line too, so she welcomed it too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I get it from all friends. It's true, donna, it's all good.
Speaker 3:It makes me feel loved. You get plenty of love. Trust me, I do. You are well loved, so I'm not lacking for love. What are you doing? You always ask me and it's the same story. I'm like I'm running around after kids and I got that kid here and this kid there. I mean, my kids are just everywhere. So that's what I do with my life. I do podcasts, I run around like an idiot and I chase kids. What are you doing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've really been busy in a good way, you know, and I feel like we've had this discussion in studio before where I've teed up. Look, there's a difference between being busy and being productive, and in the busyness I am doing right now is all productive. So I love that. Actually, I'm very thankful for that. I'm also looking forward to the Thanksgiving holidays so I can maybe catch up on a couple hours of sleep.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, just wrapped up a two day conference, donna, one thing you normally are in the room on but I just wrapped another executive transition assistance program our senior leaders from yesterday. I had all the branches in the room. Okay, well, I maybe should caveat I didn't have coasties and I didn't have space for us, but I had Navy men, women, marines, army, air Force. It was a really productive two days, and then now I'm catching up with all my coaching plans. So hair is on fire, but, looking forward to Thanksgiving, we're going to go camp for five days. Actually, we may not. We may not cook a turkey, but a Cornish in may go down, I don't know.
Speaker 3:You're not going to do it in like the campfire, like that. What is it when you fry the turkey? Oh, sherry would be up for that, she would be all over that.
Speaker 2:Sherry's got mad skills. If I was to do that, what once looked like a turkey would probably come out looking like a piece of charcoal. I don't know, I don't know that I'll. I don't know that I'll give that a go, donna, but I do know that I it's good to be back with you in this time and space and it's I'm really excited for the guest today in the knowledge wisdom.
Speaker 3:Me too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that he's going to bring, it's good.
Speaker 3:So I have to tell the little backstory to it. So we were, I was talking with our executive director, cindy, and we're you know, we're working on this radio stream that start starting up next year by 2024 it's coming. I'm learning all kinds of things that I never thought I would learn because I'm a nurse and we don't do this stuff. And here I am, and so we just started talking about podcasts and I and I had gone to a book event, right, so I went to speak at this book event I got invited to. There was six authors there and one of them was General Flowers, and General Flowers retired two star Air Force. He is the longest serving veteran in the military 46 years, yeah and a really neat guy and he really was the I call him like the Dolly Partner of the military, not for his singing but for his rags to riches stories and where he started literally like in a shack and then he worked all his way up to two stars. So he's pretty much like look, if I can do it, then like anybody can do it, I had every art against me. Anyways, he makes this comment about this coalition starting and I'm not really going to speak to it because I'm going to find out more later. Him and I are meeting, but he was talking about this coalition to help reduce suicide and it's a big one and, of course, caught my attention.
Speaker 3:And then, after we all speak, and then we have break time and I go over and talk with them and I said I want, and I want to know more. Anyway, so that happens at least to a conversation with Cindy. I'm telling her what's going on and I went, oh, you should talk to Dr Dr Mark Russell's. And I went I should, why should I? And then she starts telling me a little bit of his backstory. She's like but you want me to connect you. I'm like heck, yeah.
Speaker 3:And so I said Mark and I had a very good, long discussion and we connected on a level that I do not connect with very many people from with not from, but with that level was really understanding the well I'm going to be frank understand the bullshit side of what was going on in military mental health, and I knew it from a like a coordinator nurse perspective and intimately in that regard, where they shared a lot of what was going on and I was watching it and I was in the middle of liaisoning all the time and dealing with everything, sector, the Air Force level, all the way down, and he dealt with it, which we're going to talk about on his level as actually the psychologist, and then him going up and down the ladder and what had led him to. Well, I'm going to let him tell the story, right, I'm not even going to get into it. So, mark, that is our cue to introduce him. So welcome, dr Mark Russell. How are you?
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, it's good to have you on the show.
Speaker 4:Thank you, jay. It's a pleasure to be on the show with you.
Speaker 2:And thanks for your service. Right, veterans days up not far behind us and Marine Corps birthday not far behind us. But right, happy veterans day, happy birthday, marine Corps.
Speaker 3:He has a little of both of those behind him when you said Marines and Navy, so I'm going to read his little short bio and, trust me, it's very humble compared to all the stuff he's done. But Mark support, certified clinical psychologist, he actually retired from the Navy and, oh nine, after 10 years as a Marine he had listed in the Marine Corps and 16 years as a Navy psychologist. And he deployed in support of Iraq, the Iraq invasion. He became a military whistleblower, which is what we're going to talk about today Against military medicine to prevent a self inflicted mental health crisis.
Speaker 3:That's described, described in his book psychiatric casualties how and why the military ignores the full cost of war is featured his he is featured in his two documentary films, thank you for your service and stranger at home, which is airing on PBS nationally on veterans day and we're going to talk. I watched a little bit of thank you for your service and we'll talk about that a little later. So, mark, welcome, because I said you and I connected on a very, very unique level that I honestly don't have other people that have that aspect, and even you said like it's nice to have somebody that I got it. That really gets that side.
Speaker 4:It's not a. It's not a big group you try to do battle. It's probably bigger than I'm aware of, but as far as in my little network I don't have that opportunity to.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:I can run levels of people who've gone to that. So yeah, it was good for me to.
Speaker 3:And kind of like have you summarize kind of where you were, where you went? You know how you got in the military, how you got up to being clinical psychologists, and just a brief summary of that. And and then, when you got into being a psychologist, what you started seeing.
Speaker 4:So Okay, so my father is a career Marine, spent 30 years in the Marine for it is free and war in a Vietnam war veteran. So a lot of my memories of childhood was my dad either coming to, going from deployment and we saw changes and we move around from bases to bases and so that was my upbringing. I swore all the way through my adolescence I would never be a jarhead, I would never join in no tick with my dad always betruses about what we're going to do, we get out of high school and we're going to get this high and tight, etc. So I tried baseball was my first dream and I went to college on a scholarship and I was a big fish in a small pond in high school and I got to a college level and I was out of my league. So I left college and then drifted for a while at home until a marine recruiter shows up and then the lights went on and then that started my career as an enlisted marine.
Speaker 4:And what was interesting for me then is I saw this was 1979. So it was the post Vietnam era and we saw a lot of veterans who were in Vietnam. We stayed on active duty and the drug abuse was rampant Alcohol PTSD, but back then we didn't. That hadn't even been adopted yet. It was 1979. When I first came in, and so I saw firsthand but didn't recognize what I was seeing Like okay, this is what was become known as PTSD. It was a lot of those type of experiences that this percolated for me, and then I got into taking college classes and At some point decide I was going to be a clinical psychologist and I wanted to go and finish my military career. The Marine Corps doesn't have psychologists Because all their health care is done by the Navy. So my goal was to get my degree and then come back in the Navy as a clinical psychologist, which is what I eventually did and as far as that's how I got in the military.
Speaker 3:That's the first step.
Speaker 2:Well, to take away is from me, dr Mark, listening to that already, that I know about you. You have a bigger brain than I do and you're obviously more athletic. Hearing you, hearing that you got a scholarship to go play ball in college that's still pretty dog gone cool. Well, thank you.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, I was. My heart and soul was to be a baseball player, and it was really. And the Marine recruiter got me in by saying, yeah, they have baseball in the Marine Corps.
Speaker 2:Pick up, pick up league on occasion when you're Well, he's thinking probably softball was.
Speaker 4:They did that. I ended up playing it.
Speaker 3:What when? So you came in started I mean, to the Navy. You're now a psychologist. What are you watching and what is developing that eventually leads you to say, hell, no, we got to do something different here.
Speaker 4:Okay, so that's a little bit of a longer story. But as far as my what, when I got out of the Marine Corps and I went to graduate school, I did my dissertation on, you know, veterans and why some develop PTSD and others did not. With with the commonality, they all went to combat and we measure combat exposure and trying to look at Over some variables, and that's when I started becoming aware of the history of war, stress, combat stress and different names it was called over the centuries and etc. The theme that was picked up during my dissertation research was that the history of mental health in the military is one of learning these lessons of war or war trauma, and then forgetting these lessons after each war and then having to reinvent the wheel, basically because we have neglected these lessons from our predecessors. Right, that percolated for me until the time I had to go to war, and this is in 2002.
Speaker 4:We were a field hospital and I was the head of Neural Psychiatry at that time and we're going to deploy in support of the Iraq invasion In 2003,. And we went to Camp Pendleton for a medical triage exercise under battle simulations. So basically, they had bombs bursting, machine gun fire and it looked like a Hollywood set where they had very realistic physical wounds that were, you know, emulated, of all kinds, and it really got your heart pumping right. And so I'm sitting here with my Neural Psychiatry unit and we're waiting for the casualties, for the psychiatric casualties, so I can start getting my psychiatric technicians and psychiatrists and nurses, so we can all kind of get into a flow. But what are we going to handle as far as modern warfare and war stress? And it took about 3 hours into the exercise and we were sitting doing nothing when I started complaining to the my commanding officers about where's what's going on with behavioral health and so on, they said, well, sit tight, russell, will, there'll be somebody coming your way soon. So an hour later, 4 hours into this realistic medical drama that was unfolding, we got our first and only psychiatric casualty and there was a young female landscorp on the Marine Corps who had done on a mask in a cake and was under the delusions of being that girl. And that was our one and only practice. For how do you deal with PTSD and the 21st century, as we're about to go invade a country and we're expecting high levels of casualties and, you know, going into that? So that was my opening and I didn't really understand what was going on. But then I started those lessons from my research in years past that started percolating again.
Speaker 4:And then we deploy and we're setting up our field hospital. The all the tents are being set up. It's a field tent hospital, right, like you see, in a mash unit, and I'm with all my other department heads and you know, had a surgery, had a nursing, had a pharmacy and and E R, etc. And while they're telling us in a large formation where we're going to go to as far as which tent do we go, set up our shop Right. So you know, surgery gets called and they go to 10 for and nursing wards go to 10, 5 and 6, etc, etc. And literally I'm the last person standing in a field by myself and with this chief medical officers, you know any, looking down at me from his platform and I'm asking with this clip or I'm saying, sir, where's, where's mental health go? And he looked on the clip where he says, well, there's, I don't see mental health here and to be honest with you, russell, I don't even know why you're here.
Speaker 3:So that what year was?
Speaker 4:this. This is in 2003.
Speaker 2:That's really mind boggling, right. No one on words that. Yeah, I don't understand that.
Speaker 4:It's hard to understand that. I mean, there's no excuse for that. You know again we're. We're in the 21st century. If we were in the 1800s, in the American Civil War, you could almost understand.
Speaker 2:Right Sure.
Speaker 4:But here we are, and again we're about ready to invade a country that we believe has chemical, nuclear and biological weapons, and when the strongest armies in the Middle East. And so we're all prepared for a huge amount of casualties. And yet psychiatric, as we know, are going to be a large part of that. And yet we have that girl to practice on, and then, when we actually show up, we didn't even follow the blueprint for this field hospital, and so those, those were things that percolated. We, during that time there, we didn't have a mission for psychiatry or for a neural psychiatry. So we, just we. We developed a plan where we're going to screen every medical casualty that comes through the hospital for combat stress reactions, and then we're going to do some post deployment debriefings, because they're now leaving away from their units, so they're going to go directly from our hospital back to the United States on the jet point. So we're going to give them some discussion about how do you talk about this with your family, deal with the media, etc.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hey, dr Mark, I don't mean to step on your.
Speaker 2:You know what you're saying I always have questions and sometimes I think maybe I'm following in the right way, but maybe even context for our listeners. So you know, when you talked about here, we are in 2003 and we haven't found this place, and you said it'd be different if we're talking, you know, 1860s or something we have for things like what we call PTSD today or TBIs traumatic brain injuries Back then, a term maybe that was being used was shell shock. Is that true? Shell shock was kind of an idea. And then, as you were talking, I started picturing the movie with George C, scott, portray and Patton right, yes, and the young private in the infirmary and just can't go. He's emotionally, something has taken him out of an ability to be able to function. And now I'm listening to you share this and I think actually it has to happen on a really much larger scale. And so then, this is the part that you're recognizing, true, am I following along? Okay?
Speaker 4:Oh, you're following along just fine.
Speaker 3:Good job, Jay.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you guys. But yeah, we think there's shell shock and a lot of people bring the history of this problem to the, which is the first world war, when we they use that term for what we now call PTSD and TBI. You said Jay, but even before then there were a lot of lessons learned, including before the American Civil War, but we had things they had called nostalgia or traumatic neurosis and irritable heart, soldiered heart these were terms that were used or insanity, so there were a lot of different terminology for it that eventually developed into what we call PTSD.
Speaker 3:So that was 2003. This is pie. I popped in my head in 2000, 2000,. Right, uss Cole, that was 2000. And I was part of the team that recovered them. But I was one of the flight crew and it's funny, I just thought back to this.
Speaker 3:We actually had one of the chiefs was going into like a psychological shock. He was curling up into the fetal position. My texts were coming to me saying, ma'am, this guy is not doing good. They were recognizing he wasn't doing good. He literally was curling into a fetal position. They couldn't get him to respond. Physically he was fine, I mean, he didn't have any wounds that way. Blood pressure, vitals were stable, but he himself is started to withdraw right.
Speaker 3:Well, we had to the short version. We had to go into a Rhein mine. We couldn't come into Ramstein because of weather and when we landed I said we need, I need a chaplain or a psychologist or a psychiatrist or a therapist. I need somebody out of this place Two in the morning, by the way and they're like oh yeah, sorry, ma'am, it's like two in the morning and I said they have a two hour bus ride back to Launce-Dool, I need somebody now. And they fought me on it and I said I'm going to be clear, somebody comes off this plane until I have somebody, and I don't care who the hell you have to call, call them. And they did.
Speaker 3:They got somebody, and you know we don't always get to find out the end of the story. Right, I just got them together and they went down and we didn't. We stayed up there. We had a crew that went down with them. But I did find out briefly that he they said it was a good thing that they had somebody with him because, like, the text couldn't handle this. He was very unresponsive mentally. It was really bad. And it's just when you were saying this stuff, when they're like, oh sorry, doc, don't know what to do with you, I'm like, yeah, here I am, say, I had to pretty much demand we're not moving until you're giving me somebody that I need. And they were blowing it off too. Oh, ma'am, it's only a two hour ride to Launce-Dool, he'll be fine, really, yeah, so I not to derail it, but it just random thought that popped in my head.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, it's again. The tragedy is that these lessons have been learned every generation since the first. Well, since the American Civil War has documented these lessons. So you could the first world war and the second world war. One of the best contributions they made to the field of mental health or military medicine was they documented in great detail about what was successful and how they managed mental health, the psychological wounds of war, and then, more importantly, what do they fail in? And it was the failures.
Speaker 4:You'll see a pattern where every generation is citing the same failures. First and foremost is that we ignore the lessons from the previous generation, and these books are again. You can Google it. You can find extracts from these books. They're available. This information the military has in their archives. And their textbook on war psychiatry is the very first chapter is about this history of lessons to learn and relearn, or have them been forgotten and relearn. So that's, that's the title of their first chapter. So it's an acknowledgement that when we go into the invading Iraq, that this was something, that these lessons needed to be learned, and if we don't, we're going to commit the same folly as the previous generations which we hear.
Speaker 2:Yeah, here, when you say that, mark, I think about that old. You know I'm going to paraphrase it. We've probably heard it stated different ways in our lives. But if we fail to learn from history, right, we're doomed to repeat it, and so some of that again underpins, I think, what I I hear you talking about too.
Speaker 4:Oh, absolutely, yeah, no question about it. And the people who pay the price aren't the politicians, not the higher level brass, it's going to be. You know those, the grunts and their families, and you know the people who are doing the war fighting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but do you know what's annoying about that? What's really annoying about that is that some of those leaders went through this crap. Yeah, they went through it. Maybe they're even dealing with it themselves. And yet the bureaucracy, or, as I like to call it, the big Humvee, keeps rolling. It doesn't, it doesn't stop, it doesn't change speeds, it doesn't do anything. It just keeps moving forward at the exact same speed.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean again every generation you can find a spokesperson and often they are leaders. There was a different patent, not Georgia seat patent of this generation. Peter Corelli, who was the vice chair of the army, has been an outspoken advocate for mental health and TBI awareness in dealing with stigma in the military and unfortunately what happens is that these people move on. You know they retire and so whatever programs they develop, whatever you know insights and progressiveness and how we're going to deal with mental health now on the same level we deal with physical health all those you know well intended intentions are forgotten and those lessons are kind of left to the next generation to develop.
Speaker 3:Right and reinvent and re figure out what, when you were seeing all this stuff right. So now you're you're getting some experience and you're you're researched and you're reading and your knowledge and what you're seeing, and there's just sparks now like hmm, what the hell, what is it that's building and what is it that led you to say I'm blowing the whistle, officially I'm blowing the whistle.
Speaker 4:Right. Well, here we are back in, you know, during the invasion of Iraq and we're we're now seeing and we're screening every medical casualty that comes through who's, who's you know, conscious and whatnot for combat stress. We're identifying them early so when they go back to Walter Reed or back to San Diego that they have, you know, somebody's identified, they already need to be followed up with. So we we screen I think, about 2000 people during the time I was there and we identified at least 6700 who clearly had, like what you described on, a real severe traumatic stress reaction to what we were going through. And then we did debriefings and we did other things. We did some treatment in this field hospital as well, and then we collected all this data and then we have VIPs that came to the field hospital and then our command wanted to kind of show off a little bit about like what.
Speaker 4:This is what we did, something that's innovative. It wasn't in the blueprints for psychiatric how to manage psychiatric wounds of war, but this is what we did and we think that this should be replicated. So we did a dog and pony show and the highest ranking psychiatrist in the military was a three star Admiral and he came by and we gave them this dog and pony show, and he stands up and he says well, very impressive and very impressive work, gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, but unfortunately it would all be forgotten. The next war comes and we're we're flabbergasted. This is the beginning of the Iraq invasion. We had already been in Afghanistan two years prior and we're already seeing, you know, scores of epidemics of suicide and untreated war stress injuries, when people are coming back from just that time alone. Here's the senior mode responsible, highest ranking person does. We can't do nothing about it because it's mental health.
Speaker 3:We're just going to ignore it, unless that the next generation deal with now I'm going to, I'm going to say something and, mark, you and I talked about this and I'm going to say this. And it's not even in defense of the military, it's just kind of a fact thing that what you know when you first start hearing the stuff like when I started working at the higher levels with these people I was just jaw dropped at what I was hearing because it was similar crap to that. I mean, not the exact wording, but their actions were following the sentiment and one of the things that I have had to remind myself and this is not an excuse and I am not giving the military an out on this it's just that we are designed to go break and shoot things and defend our country. We are not, is not built in by design on what to do with the broken assets. And even this far along, we still can't figure this out. We still can't figure it like oh, I broke it, okay, well, the answer is to go get the street sweeper and get it off the road and get some more Right and guess what the military is running into right now?
Speaker 3:They can't find them. Streets weepers come through and there's a lot less people on the Humvee and then they're like okay, where's the rescue? Jumping on, and the younger generations like pound sand, I ain't doing that. And now they're like uh-oh, now what? Then me? And they're listening. They excited they are, but we know how that goes sometimes too. So, like I said, I'm not defending them, but I am saying by design, we are designed to go break things and do things and defend our country, you know.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I do. I think what you outline perfectly is the dilemma the military faces. The military actually has two missions. This is explicit in their Department of Defense mission statement. One is to fight and win wars. That's what you're talking about.
Speaker 3:You said it nicer than I did.
Speaker 4:That's their official policy. The second is force health protection, especially when you have an all voluntary military. That started in the 1970s, that force health protection now takes on a whole another level that sometimes is Maybe not equal to the fighting, the wars, but it's certainly a big part of it. I would say. When it comes to treating the medical, the physical wounds of war, we do remarkably well, we're good, in fact. Those lessons learned are translated, as you know, into our ER and help with life saving techniques that developed out the military medicine.
Speaker 3:Agreed.
Speaker 4:Because we learned those lessons of war. If you can do that part of the force health protection and we do an outstanding job in terms of dealing with burns and amputations and very serious traumatic wounds and then helping rehabilitate those people but why don't we do that for the mental health Right? We broke the brain.
Speaker 3:They don't know what to do with a broken brain. They're just like oh, sorry about that, Like oops, yeah, I get that too.
Speaker 2:Look, I want to step in there real quick, though it's kind of pertinent to times, I think, date stamping this episode which all listeners know. We record these and then they slowly get released and out. So we try not to date stamp, but in the news right now, what's going on in the world are these random, isolated attacks that are happening on positions all across Southwest Asia, right, and they're already reporting that military members have suffered some level of TBI from some of these events. So, jumping way ahead, dr Mark I don't mean to be You'll be able to put a better, you know bow on this. I want to get back to your story, but maybe the work you've done and some of the things we're learning about right now, your actions, it seems to be we're getting it. Maybe. I pray that to be true. Anyway, I'll turn back to you.
Speaker 3:I like the mark has the same smirk I do. You can talk, Mark. Go ahead.
Speaker 4:Please, donna. No, I mean, that's Jay. What you outlined was my whole mindset. Yeah, I spent my you know, three, three decades of my life in the military and I grew up in a military environment, right as I described earlier. So I always had a sense of optimism that the military leaders, once they become aware or congressional leaders, for that matter too that once you become aware of these problems and you give them a good you know, concrete solutions that could actually help and fill in some of the holes, the gaps, that people would do the right thing, because there is a sense that I always maintain that, up until a certain point, that people just needed to have the information.
Speaker 4:So one of the things I did when I got back from Iraq and that that Admiral said this statement that nothing's going to change, I'll maybe reinvent it I went back in and surveyed all the people in uniform that I knew and their partners, so about 165 Army, navy, air Force, psychiatrists, psychologists and Social Workers and the screening questions I was asking them. It was the survey. The survey was had they been given, did they feel they've given adequate training on how to diagnose and treat PTSD, for example? And at that time in 2004, the first clinical practice guidelines were adopted by the VA in the DOD and they identified four evidence-based treatments for PTSD, but the unanimous recommendation that everybody should have access to those treatments as soon as possible to prevent long-term disability right. So I screened these people and those questions and 90% responded negatively. They did not feel they had adequate treatment or training on the diagnosis and treatment of PTSD.
Speaker 3:So these are all professionals? These are all the professionals you were screening, asking these questions to.
Speaker 4:These are the people, like me in uniform, that servicemen and women who go to war are going to come to for expert help, and yet we're not properly trained. Of course there's issues around staffing etc that you won't get into that right now, but so, anyways, that survey, I communicated those results up to chain of command, all the way up to the top of View med, the head of Navy in the head of Marine Corps, and I shared it with the Army and along with that I developed a program with the VA, a Steven Silver, who ran the PTSD programs out of Coachville, pennsylvania, and he was a Vietnam veteran himself. M and I teamed up for the DLD and VA and we did this grassroots training where he provided One of those evidence-based treatments that were recommended most guidelines I mentioned called EMDR, movement desensitization.
Speaker 2:I've done it.
Speaker 4:Right, okay, so, and that's been around since 1989.
Speaker 4:Right, but here we are in 2004 now, and so Steve Steven Silver and I, we go to 6 different regions in the United States and including 1 in Korea, and we provide free training.
Speaker 4:For, on this evidence base, it was a 4 day training and we train everybody I act of duty, civilian contractors, va personnel, whoever in that region 1 of that training we would be given it to them for free, cost of government 0.
Speaker 4:And we collected data, like when they went back to their bases in their hospital and the garrisons and they use this. We start collecting data on the effectiveness of the using this treatment and this, and we got good data that shows that you know, in many cases, if we were not wounded and then 4 sessions of EMDR, your PTSD, your depression symptoms, everything went bottomed out on average and if you were wounded in action, it would be 8 sessions. So we collected this data from every region, we funneled that up to the highest levels of the Pentagon and in Congress and we did these after action reports, right, and got awarded for it, all this other stuff, and every time there was a promise that thank you, this is now we're going to take this and we're going to make these changes. So now at least we're going to do is make sure the providers we do have on hand are properly trained so that people do have access to a reasonable standard of care. For example, nothing happened.
Speaker 4:And then it's just going on up until 2006. And I keep communicating up the chain about problems with staffing and how to fix our staffing problems and what are the policies that we have that are creating the staffing problems in the military. And everything gets recognized and it's we're I'm thankful for it and that's about it right. And then it's quiet. And then I listened to Congressional testimonies all throughout this whole time. When there's epidemics, suicide again, a lot of families are up in arms that their son or daughter are not getting treatment Now the old Walter Reed barracks scandal. And yet when it comes to mental health, the official line was everything's fine. We got the best mental health services ever available to our men and women in service. They're all getting access to care and it's timely and we've never done it better. And I'm seeing a movie. I know it was seeing quite the opposite and that Is what led me to speak out. And that's the beginning of but you had asked earlier but I didn't have to become a.
Speaker 4:That was the genesis of that point.
Speaker 2:So when you got to mark up, I've got to go for just a quick question on that. Maybe this is going to come out organically anyways. You know, we have inherent in this country, built in what is defined, or at least Described, as whistleblower protection, but so often the people who are brave enough, as yourself, to push back against the inequality, the things that we know are wrong and are just being to this. We hear that, well, it's nice and theory that we have these guidelines and laws and place to protect, but not always have, without going in with whatever detail you want to. How about this? Have you faced some pretty tough scrutiny, criticism and endured some pretty tough things because you've been outspoken?
Speaker 4:Oh my gosh, jay, yes, and again, not alone at the IANE stretch. It's more the norm of military to support an outlier. But I will say this like once I spoke out, it got picked up by the Stars and Stripes, you know the Armed Forces newspaper, where I was in Japan at the time, and USA Today picked it up and they ran a cover story on it and it started getting picked up in different media in Congress I was drunk in the Congress, so the basically what happened? I got an email right after the USA Today article got published and it was. The subject line was Benedict Arnold and it was from high headquarters, about meaning is shut up and stay in my lane Unbelievable.
Speaker 4:And at that point I was a commander in a senior ranking commander and it was the top rank commander for a command. And I'm doing, I'm doing these training programs, I'm doing special projects for an admiral and all this other stuff. Well, I went from the top ranking commander in order to get promoted and in the military you get two chances to get promoted, right, right, and after that you fail to select, you get out and I was going up for captain and I went from being the top rank commander to the lowest rank commander, and both in two successive years, and that was as a result of my filing department of defense inspector general complaint against the head of military medicine.
Speaker 3:Let me ask this when you filed right, because we heard like oh, people filed the whistle blowers, when, when, how does that happen? Like you is there like a online form that you fill out, or like, how does that actually occur when you are now an official whistleblower and do you get like a bodyguard or something, or like what comes with it?
Speaker 4:So it's just bringing it back. So a couple of times again, I did this in 2006. And you go online and there's a form to fill out and you submit it to the IG. And I submitted a very detailed point by point of the chronology of the events, some of which I discussed already today. But, more importantly, I gave them specific solutions to how to deal with our staffing problem, how we deal with our lack of mental health training, how we deal with transitions and dealing with stigma, etc. And it wasn't just my ideas. This is the stuff I drew on from other generations seven. We're saying the same things back in their day. So I submitted that to IG via electronic, but and you have the option of that keeping confidential between you and the IG I maybe did something.
Speaker 4:Stupid is that I didn't want the higher ups to be blindsided, and my, my wasn't to get anybody in trouble, it was to fix the problems.
Speaker 4:And let's do it now, while it's still 2004, five and six, and the wars are still raging, and Afghanistan and in Iraq in particular. So I sent it, I sent my copy of my IG complaint to all the heads of the military Submission members, and that's my first step as a whistleblower, because I had to blow the lid, because I wanted them to be aware of it, but also that I wasn't going to just file an IG and go silently. So yes, in answer to your comment, jay, there was reprisal, without a doubt, and I can go more into that, but it was as I mentioned in the films. For me it was a moral choice of sitting back, preserving my career but being complicit in a crisis that was, you know, killing tens of thousands of people or peak up in risk. At that time I was. I was threatened with court martial, I was not sure Different punishments, I say this with all endearment I you modeled.
Speaker 2:what integrity is.
Speaker 2:Not what it's described as what it is right Doing the right thing regardless of outcome. Sometimes standing on the right, the side of right, might mean you're standing alone. I just want to say thank you, number one. I know they're listening to you. There's still a ton that we still need to learn, still need to do to take care of those that have stood up and said I will wear the nation's uniform, but when I heard you say you blasted this thing out, you know, to all of these senior leaders, I thought, man, he didn't just lightly wrap on the door, he didn't ring the doorbell, he walked in and started beating a trash can lid right in their presence. You know, but look, I'm serious when I say this stuff. And, mark, unbelievable Thank you, right, because when you said I didn't want to be complicit is what is the word I think you used. By no means were you. You drew the right attention.
Speaker 3:You weren't a whistleblower, you were a whistle bomber. You take it to a whole new level there. I'm sure the whistleblower program was like oh Lord.
Speaker 4:But literally I communicated at least 50 different emails and point papers on the chain before I got to that point, so it was really out of exasperation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure.
Speaker 4:And at the time I met a rural base on a marine base in Japan, rural Japan. Iwas the only psychologist, the only credentialment provider on that base for 6,000 Marines who are all coming back from the sandpit directly to Japan. And I covered three other bases and I was on page watch 24, seven and something had to give. And that's what you get. Let me out of desperation to become a whistle bomber. We're reaching a point where it was catastrophic the suicides, the domestic abuse, the, just the people's health being ruined and people crying in my office that they wanted to come back and see me. I couldn't see them for three months because that was the waiting list, the backlog that was created, and this is not unique to Iwakuni, it was in every base, every location was struggling with. How do we manage this mental health crisis that all the upper echelons were refusing to acknowledge, that even existing?
Speaker 2:Sometimes the passage of time heals right and with the issue we're talking about, maybe not so much, but at some point your career culminated your official service in uniform. Are you viewed differently today, with looking back and in the communities, with what you raised and the reasons you did it? Or is there still this a little bit of scarlet letter, dr Mark, I don't know any other way to say it Are you allowed of an outlier that people are like? I don't know how to take that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think it's like the military dilemma. I think it's mixed. I've gotten a lot of emails and communications with people who were appreciative of my speaking out, especially in uniform, not waiting till I retire then speak out, which you see a lot of in our generals and admirals. But I still get a lot of the other side too, that I'm a Benedict Arnold that I aired out the laundry. What a shame. I embarrassed the military that I was unbecoming of an officer because of my speaking out.
Speaker 3:You were exactly what an officer should have been. There's just not enough of them.
Speaker 4:But, that's why.
Speaker 3:Donna.
Speaker 4:The reprisal that Jay commented on is real and it's almost universal and it's very rare you're going to be applauded. Initially I was given awards. I was given a Meritorious Service Medal for all the work I was doing to proactively deal with mental health. But that was when I was working within the China Command. But when the China Command was failing and was nonresponsive and Congress was not responsible to deal with this problem, even ask about the problem, that was it.
Speaker 3:And I'll tell you something, mark, you had said when we talked. You had said and I actually made a comment, and you're like, yep, this is what's going to happen is that we just came back from Afghanistan? Well, not just. It's been a couple of years, right, we just got pulled out and now they're all home and there's not the perception oh well, there's no ongoing crisis. Now, I mean, they're all home, we're not still sending them back. And I'm like, right, yeah, now they got time to think. And nobody falls apart in the middle of a crisis. Everybody is getting their shit done, because that is how we are trained. We are going to get it done. Mission's going to come first. We're going to fall apart six months, eight months, a year later and we're not going to understand what the hell is going on and why.
Speaker 4:I mean, you're right, that's the norm. It's when the guns stop firing and the shells stop bursting and we're in a quiet place back home, maybe with our families, or back in Garrison or we PCS, away from our buddies. If you're in the military and during those times where you either hang up the uniform or you're transferred and don't know anybody, you lost that support system. That, those quiet moments is when those things, those thoughts, will start to usually haunt us and we do everything we can to avoid thinking about it, remembering it, and then, of course, you get into all the substance use problems and things that sort. But but yeah, it's a real dilemma, and how we deal with mental health In the military and I'm fully convinced of this We'll determine how we deal with mental health in the private sector.
Speaker 4:I believe that and military needs to be the leaders, since we're, you know, by our occupation, we're going to be exposed to traumatic stress, but it's war, or it's a training exercise, or it's a humanitarian disaster relief, and you can, you can go on and on is that you don't find a close knit population as Exposed to as much trauma as the military. So we're in the best position To really make a impact on dealing with stigma and dealing with Elevating mental help on the same plane as physical health.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know that's true. This may dovetail in a little bit with what you're sharing, dr Mark, to our listeners, forgive me. You all have Listened in long enough to know on a Labrador and things pop in my mind and they just kind of show up. How are we doing today across the services, to the best of your awareness, do we map pretty well now as Stacy's kind of plays someone first enters, do we do anything to look at at the, at the brain in any kind of way and then use that in comparison After they've been on duty in service for a while and have endured some different things?
Speaker 4:Well, jen, not so much. Okay, yeah, we have. We have re entered what I call the national reset and studying these cyclical generational crisis. We're in a national reset phase where we're out of a shooting war and, generally speaking, in memory starts to fade, the money starts to be pulled back. I believe these programs and what you're describing is trying to get a good baseline of people's brain function in your Psychological functioning, that I think there was some pilots studies done in the military to do that, but it's not been adopted.
Speaker 3:What about that?
Speaker 4:How do I know?
Speaker 3:the anagram that was. That was something that was going on for a while. Do you remember, jay, if you deployed that you had to do like a test before you left and then when you came back you did it at intervals, like and you did this anagram to see if there was any change. But that was not consistent. At least what I saw in the. It wasn't consistent.
Speaker 4:And how do I know this? Well, I'm doing VA disability exams now and so I'm seeing people who are still on active duty and those who just got out, and I looked through their service records as part of that evaluation. I see some of those and ams that you're talking about, donna, and but it's hit or miss. It's more missed in hit and, generally speaking, when I talk to people about the mental health stigma In today's military and the barriers to getting mental health services, they haven't moved an inch back to anything. It's gotten worse because A lot of the resources and programs and dried up I'll give the military a little bit.
Speaker 3:When I was leaving, I was sitting on these invisible working groups of sorts and 1 of the things. So in the mark you are probably a little more verse. You probably saw this. But the special forces and they've been doing this a while where they have embedded Pretty much everything. So they have their own embedded doctor, they have their own embedded therapist or psychologist or whomever. They embed a lot of the medical care right there. Why? Because they know, and research has shown, the earlier the intervention, the better the outcome. And when you're investing a million plus dollars into a person, you want to get every drop that you can out of them. It's not because they overly care, it's because they need their asset and that was an expensive ass asset. So we're going to Bed. Everybody. Give them that early intervention and they last longer, right that and that is happening, right. So when I was leaving, they were talking about and they were starting to embed them into the I guess I would call them para special special forces, like your CE groups, your CRGs, your para rescue men, your, you know those guys Were now. They were doing that with them, they were starting and and I'm ever hopeful because I am sadly some really wacky idealist that they will continue to embed Across the board.
Speaker 3:The problem is and, mark, you probably know this much better than me, but from my experience, mental health in general can handle it. I'm talking military. Mental health can handle, within its system, garden variety, anxiety, depression, ptsd. You know acute, acute break, like a one time deal where you might have had acute psychotic break, you know like a breakdown. I guess they can handle that. And I say lower level because I'm not trying to compare somebody's trauma with somebody else's, but I'm just saying that those levels and as soon as you have to go up in care and you have to get into inpatient, partial hospitalization, intensive outpatient, they don't have it. They do not. You have to refer out for everything and due to lots of limitations because I know that there are people that care in that mental health community they can't keep an eye on everybody, so they go out of the system and they're getting care and they can't keep close eyes.
Speaker 3:I did that, I was eyeballs, I was the one that was lasing back and forth, and so they are not able to do what they really need to do, even though they know this knowledge. They know, the earlier the intervention, but they don't have the resources to accomplish it. I went through the system just to see what was happening. I had a situation. I said I'm going to go try this out. I was offered drugs before I was offered talk therapy and, I kid you not, the person talking to me said, oh, you're here for talk therapy. I said, well, yeah, I just kind of want to work this out. Well, we don't have an appointment for two months this is four years ago, by the way. We don't have an appointment for like two months, but I can give you meds in the meantime. That's what we got.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and that's not just the military, that's the VA system as well. It's becomes the kind of primary and sometimes the only intervention because of the, like you said, the lack of resources. It's not just the lack of resources, but it's also the policies around what the military views is its mission in terms of do we treat PTSD?
Speaker 3:We create the lack of resources.
Speaker 4:Yeah Well yeah, we've the military's created some of this as by policy.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 4:We have.
Speaker 4:I'll give you, for example, when I was in Iwakuni and I was the only credential mental health provider I was the only credential uniform mental health provider. On that base were six other licensed mental health professionals who were forbidden by instruction to provide treatment for any mode of depression or PTSD. It can only do what they call V codes, which is like relational problems or occupational problem. So there's an instruction that handicaps about a third of the mental health force in the military. That prevents you from providing. So you have greater access, you have greater numbers of people. It's utilizing people you do have. But we're not even doing that just because the policies are in place right now.
Speaker 3:I could open a can of worms, but I'm not going to because, yes, I have so many thoughts on that, but it would be another entire podcast, and so I'm going to be professional and not say a word. So but I well, it does fire me up, it gets me going, but I'm going to ask this. So, when you, after you did the whistleblowing I mean, I think we know the answer, but I'm going to ask it anyway what was this outcome Like? What happened after you blow it? Do they like close the case after 90 days, or do they say thank you for your service to get out? And what do they do? I mean?
Speaker 4:well, I see that at that time I was a commander, so I could. I could choose when I was ready to retire, I could stay on, even though I didn't select right to the next level. So I stayed on for a little bit and I wanted to, with the understanding that I had more leverage being on active duty and if I was civilian right so I can make some changes.
Speaker 4:If I could, people would be interested in hearing what I had to say. I'd have more a chance of that being the case if I was in uniform, so I did stay on. But one of the immediate effects of my DODIG complaint was a DOD task force that Senator Boxer created out of Congress, which was a DOD task force on mental health, and they studied these problems that I was raising for about two years and they published their well, for about a year, I should say and they published their results in 2007. And basically, if you ever look at the DOD task force for mental health, it was 99 recommendations and they're pretty much identical to the things that I was. I was communicating up and down the chain, but also from every generation that has written up these lessons to learn. There was the same types of issues and problems and recommended solutions. So there was nothing new.
Speaker 4:But they, instead of the DOD being reprimanded or you know how does this fly in the face of congressional testimony just a month before that said everything was fine, and now the DOD task force says we don't even have resources to provide adequate mental health during peacetime. That was their final, conclusive statement, let alone war. So that was one immediate outcome of the whistleblowing was the DOD task force that was being congressionally mandated and I thought, okay, now that Congress has got this, they're going to really hold the military accountable for making changes. And unfortunately it didn't happen. So I don't know what other impact that had other than you know. Now I got out of the military and I've written some books and articles and got some documentaries, but I'm not a uniform now I don't have the voice I used to have.
Speaker 2:Right, there's work to be done. Right, there's work to be done in some small way, dr Mark, I'm glad you're still out there in big ways doing this, and I don't know if listeners to this podcast you know one voice can make a difference, but many voices carry a heck of a lot more weight, and this is real and there is need, greater need now maybe than any other time before, and so I just, I pray, I hope, I optimistically want this to rise to the level of attention where people take it seriously and we get the help and systems in place to provide the care that's so desperately needed.
Speaker 3:People need to hear and need to understand, even if it hasn't impacted them. And I'll tell you that I don't know how many times I would be in scenarios where I'd be fighting a commander, some ridiculous thoughts in their head, and they would tell me that our program was military welfare and all these horrible things that they would say. And then they needed, they got into a situation medical, mental health, whatever it is and then I get another phone call I'll have to mark. Can we talk? Uh-huh, and the tone's totally different and all of a sudden they're very meek. And then they're going through it and they're like, oh, I get it. I'm like, but yeah, wouldn't believe us when we're telling you you had to make sure you got into that situation first, and now all of a sudden, you're seeing lights and angels. Well, that's super awesome, thank you, believe the people.
Speaker 2:You know what, donna, go for it, donna, you and I've talked about this a little bit in the past, probably even on one of our previous episodes is are there shysters in the world? Are there people that are trying to get by on others, right? Yes, yeah, I just tend to, and I think you too you and Dr Mark, I bet feel the same way. I believe that is a very, very, very small piece of the fabric of our society.
Speaker 2:I think the vast majority of the people Of men and women are noble, well intended, truthful, and all they want right is to be fairly or rightly heard and fairly represented and cared for. And so, yeah, when I hear you talk about that somebody that believes it was a welfare program and this is a crisis, almost, if not a crisis, right, dr Mark, you're probably in the best position to say what it is.
Speaker 4:Oh, it's a crisis Again. What affects the military, it's going to affect broader society. So, true, true.
Speaker 3:Correct. Now you know you made this comment that you're like. You know I'm not really effective out as I was in, and I do sort of understand that. But I actually kind of don't agree with the statement. And the reason why is because when I was in I kept getting my hands tied by bureaucracy all the time. I don't know how many times our DAGs threaten me. Don't you go talk to outside lawyers? Don't you go help them with it? I mean, I got threatened all the time with that. They would have like little inservices on what you know how it works and I seriously they would know me and they'd be like Donna, don't I'm like what? I wasn't running out to lawyers, it was just they knew my mindset was like this is crap and if somebody you know, sometimes you need maybe a lawyer or maybe media to go do that Right. So that segues me into what you did, which was you wrote the book and psychological casualties.
Speaker 3:You have the documentary. Thank you for your service. You have another one coming out Strangers at home. I encourage the audience to watch them. Now I am going to say this If you are struggling with mental health, you either A go watch it with your therapist or talk to them about it first, or with somebody you know, or at a time that you are feeling in a good place, because these are not your oh, let's talk mental health and you got your annual training. It's not that, this is real.
Speaker 3:I watched the beginning of thank you for your service and I kind of joked with Mark I'm like who? I was tensing up in it because it brought back my fight and it brought back the things that I fought for and I was already like tensing up. I was like, oh Lord, I'm going to have to take a break. So if people are going to watch them, I encourage it, but I really encourage to make sure that you know you're in a good place to see it. But you have to see all of it. You have to face the ugly because it's there and it is what it is and it's real life and it's not conspiracy theory.
Speaker 3:And I mean I'm looking right at Mark and he does not look like somebody that's like crawled out from under a rock with all his ideas. He's not. He's researched, he's well educated, he's was at the front lines, he saw this stuff, he saw people going through this and when you get to a point where you're like enough and you go blow a whistle. That is not something that people do lightly. That's a whole other ballgame. So you know, believe it. You know it is there, it is happening, it is your friends, it is your relatives. Believe what they're saying, because I will tell you one thing that we are really good at in the military is masking. We are excellent at it. We can blow people out of the water with how well we can look good, you know. So I want to. I want to start winding it down, but, mark, I just want you to tell us briefly how did thank you for your service and strangers at home come to be?
Speaker 4:Thank you, donna, for thinking about that. The films came about kind of indirectly that I was a view to somebody who had some knowledge about how to treat PTSD in the military, and so different sets of producers were doing some documentary on PTSD and treatment and dealing with combat PTSD in particular. And then when they came and talked to me, then I shared with them some of my travels, as I've shared with you all today, and that's when they decided to go a different direction in the films and really talk more about Something that has never really been spoken about before, which is that we have these mental health crisis in the military that are unfortunately often preventable and it's self-inflicted because of our the neglect and the stigma that we associate with mental health, and so that's how I got involved in those films was more to portray the kind of insight story about what are the mental health policies and the bureaucracy that prevents us from effectively dealing with war strength injuries, and so that's kind of how I got involved with that.
Speaker 3:And I personally think that that is actually going to have a bigger impact. Not that anything and I'm not discounting anything you did in the military, I'm not discounting anything that we all did in the military but we all had to work within confines and we couldn't just lay it out. Even when I would sit in front of generals I would have to, not that I didn't back down, I would lay out, but I would have to pick and choose my words very carefully on how, and I had to get it so they could read between the lines, because you know, if you said it straight out, where are you going to be, and it's not going to be effective if I'm being asked to exit left right. So when you're out, you get to say it, you get to say this was real crap and this is why. So I think you were effective on both sides, to be honest.
Speaker 3:Thank you, yeah. So all right, I know two things. I know that Jay has got something going on in a few minutes and we got a motor. I can read that boy like you would not believe.
Speaker 2:And so yeah, you're right.
Speaker 3:I know I can see when he moves certain ways. I'm like time to wind down. So, Jay, what are your last thoughts?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have a few, I have a few. You know what I think of a John F Kennedy quote. It says if it is to be, why not me? That's you, mark, it was, it's you. And I just want to say to you again, thank you. I'll be happy to stand alongside you any day, in front of you or back to back with you in any, in any cause.
Speaker 2:I love your heart for human beings, because that's what service members are human beings who accepted a call and I know, we've heard it and it's not cliche Sign the blank check and we're willing, whether they serve for two months or whether they made a career out of it. This nation stands on its veterans and we ought to be there for them. And so, quote number two it says the soldier's heart, the soldier's spirit, the soldier's soul is everything, george Marshall. And if we were to update it for today, we would be inclined to have to say the service members heart, the service members spirit, the service members soul, the service members brain, the service members physical, mental, spiritual and emotional well being is everything. And we owe it. We owe it to stand up.
Speaker 2:So, whether you're listening to this podcast, being a veteran yourself, a military member right, a spouse, a child of, or you're just casually popping in and listening because you like the content, the discussions and you're learning a lot. We can do this together, but we can't do it if we face a little adversity and decide it's too much and we just turn around and walk from it. So, dr Mark, thank you, I'm going to go out and find the books, I'm going to watch the movies and I hope you'll call on us. Call on me if ever there's anything we can do to support you.
Speaker 4:I appreciate that, thank you, Mark?
Speaker 3:do you have anything else that you want the audience to kind of take away?
Speaker 4:Well, I just would encourage folks of your interest in this to look at the two films the Thank you for your Service by Tom Donahue and there's another movie out, thank you for your Service, by Steven Spielberg this is not that movie, okay, all right and also Strangers at Home by Beth Dolan. I think that will probably give as much kind of a practical examples and insights about some of the issues and what needs to be done to correct the problems in military mental health care. So I much appreciate, donna and Jay, you're giving me this platform to talk a little bit about military mental health care.
Speaker 3:Good, all right. Well, I think the last thing I have to say is like there's more to follow. I know that when Mark and I talked, we both were like, oh, we need to take a break, because we're both pretty passionate about it, and it's good. I'm glad it's nice to find other people that are just as passionate, because sometimes I had to remind myself that I really wasn't crazy or off the res. I just really thought that we could find a solution. So I think we're just going to wrap this up and, as always, we are very thankful for our viewers and our listeners Our listeners we don't do this on visual but our listeners and we really hope that you share this, like it. You know all the social media stuff. I'm not good at it, but I keep trying to do it, so just be kind and hit likes and shares and comments. We love to engage with people and from all of us here at Coming Home Well, which is our parent podcast, and us here at Beyond the Frontline, you guys have an awesome week.
Speaker 2:Thanks for an hour.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to Beyond the Frontline, a podcast of Coming Home. Well, Join us every other Wednesday and if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with others, post about it on social media or leave a rating and review.