One in five Army kids will need mental health treatment within the first 15 to 16 years of their lives, said the Army’s director of psychological health.
But there continues to be a nationwide shortage of child psychologists and child psychiatrists, affecting not just the military community, but the civilian community at large. “We have a mismatch in what we need and what the nation can provide,” said Dr. Christopher Ivany, a doctor who is also chief of the Behavioral Health Division/Service Line Office of the Army Surgeon General. Comparing the needs of military children to children in the civilian community, the “broad averages are pretty close,” Ivany said, but experts are working on more exact comparisons.
Ivany spoke at a family forum of the annual meeting of the Association of the U.S. Army, exploring various aspects of research on the effects of deployments on military children, and some programs that help mitigate those effects.
The Army can’t just hire enough people to provide mental health care – officials have to work with the community, he said. Through the Child and Family Behavioral Health System, they bring together best practices. Part of that is school behavioral health clinics within Army schools on post at 14 installations. Officials have found children have much easier access to the mental health care they need, he said.
[For more of this story, written by Karen Jowers, go to http://www.defensenews.com/art...or-military-children]
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