On the recordJuly 7, 2011
I thank Mr. Dicks, the ranking member, for working with me on this critical issue and look forward to working soon enough on this. [Apr. 7, 2011] Panel Questions Adequacy of Mental Health Care (By Andrew Tilghman) The military's top doctors faced heated questions on Capitol Hill about whether there are enough mental health professionals to meet the soaring demand from troubled troops. ``Do you feel you have adequate mental health personnel?'' asked Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., at an April 6 hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee's defense panel. Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, the Army surgeon general, acknowledged that the military would prefer to have more, but cited an overall lack of mental health professionals nationwide as a key challenge. ``I think the nation is facing problems. As a microcosm of the nation, we have problems,'' Schoomaker said. Congress has been pressing the military health system to add more psychiatric doctors, nurses and social workers for several years. That has prompted the services to add about 1,500 full-time mental health professionals since 2006--a 70 percent increase. But demand has continued to outpace that growth. Active- duty troops and their families were referred to off-base civilian mental health care professionals nearly 4 million times in 2009, roughly double the number of off-base referrals in 2006, military data show.…
