News From the Cause
Mental health specialists assigned to Camp Pendleton regiment battered in Afghanistan (NORTH COUNTY TIMES, SDGO)
February 28, 2011
For nearly seven months, they've seen friends die or have their limbs shredded by crude roadside bombs.
They've hunted insurgents in the hills and valleys of Afghanistan's Helmand province, in searing heat and freezing temperatures.
They've seen more casualties ----- 25 killed and more than 150 wounded ---- than any similarly sized battalion in the nearly 10-year-old war.
In April, members of Camp Pendleton's 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment will come home to their wives, girlfriends and children. They will bring with them what they saw, heard and felt in some of the heaviest fighting of the war.
Officials expect that some troops will have a hard time sorting all that out, so they're assigning a host of mental health professionals to help them and their families in an intensive fashion never done before.
"Our goal is to make sure that when anyone goes forward and goes through what these guys have gone through, it not be at the expense of their families or their own mental health," said Rear Adm. C. Forrest Faison III, commander of Navy Medicine West and Naval Medical Center San Diego.Click here to view more
