Mental Health and the Military

The Washington Post has a profile of Maj. Nidal Hasan, the man who killed 13 people at Fort Hood yesterday. My first thought is for the families of the people who died and were injured, and for Hasan's family, who must feel tremendous guilt and confusion. But the case also raises questions for me about how the military should deal with people who are clearly unable to serve and stay sane.

I don't think it's possible to build a psychiatric evaluation system that catches everyone. And I understand that the military signs contracts with people, and relies on those contracts to keep the ranks full--it's a serious matter on both sides. But it's not actually beneficial for the military to keep people on who can't serve effectively, or who will melt down while serving. There needs to be some balance between a system that allows people to fake mental illness to get out of contracts they simply don't want to fulfill, and a system that misses people who are too ill to handle the pressures of service. I don't know what that balanced system looks like. But I hope the military has better ideas than I do.