(NEW YORK) MintPress — Coming home can be a rough adjustment for any soldier who has served in combat — but new research shows it is particularly tough for members of the National Guard, the military reserve force comprised of so-called citizen soldiers.
Not only do they face discrimination when it comes to employment. but they also suffer higher rates of untreated mental health problems and related ills than enlisted military personnel.
The National Guard faces unique challenges compared to our active-duty counterparts,” acknowledged Gen. Craig R. McKinley, chief of the National Guard Bureau, which is responsible for administering the Guard’s 54 state and territorial units, at a recent public forum.
Members of the National Guard have always played an integral role in the American military in times of conflict, but never more so than today. They account for 28 percent of the 2.3 million service members who have deployed to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the last ten years.
Now, with all troops back from Iraq and more on the way from Afghanistan, critics of the government’s treatment of National Guard members fear their problems could become even worse.
Punished by federal employers
Although it is against the law for employers to penalize service members because of their military duties, there have been several cases in which the government has either rescinded job offers to those who cannot get released from duty quickly enough or fired those who have been absent from work.
In 2011, nearly 20 percent of the 1,548 complaints about violations of that law involved federal agencies.
The government is in fact the largest employer of citizen-soldiers: About 123,000 of the 855,000 men and women currently serving as Guard members and reservists, or about 14 percent, have jobs in the public sector.
Byzantine bureaucracy
The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) of 1994 was designed to ensure that members of the military don’t face a disadvantage in their civilian careers because of their service. It calls on the federal government to be “a model employer.”
But advocates for vets say the system for challenging alleged USERRA violations is difficult to maneuver, with no single agency having oversight. In addition, the federal government doesn’t have much incentive to improve. It can be ordered only to pay back wages while a private company could have to shell out twice the amount of an employee’s lost wages.
Ironically, the Defense Department, including the Army, Navy, Air Force and various other defense agencies, had the most USERRA cases filed with the Labor Department last year, while the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) came in second. Other major offenders include the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Postal Service.
Reform efforts
The problems persist even though the Obama administration says it has made a priority of cutting veterans’ unemployment rate, which is significantly higher among veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan than in the population as a whole.
Federal officials have acknowledged the violations and contend that the main challenge has been educating supervisors in the field. The VA began in-depth training for managers in November, while the Defense Department, along with the VA and six other agencies, formed a working group late last year to examine how to improve federal compliance.
Systemic problem
Employment is not the only hurdle that returning Guard members have to overcome. They also face a disproportionate rate of untreated post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI).
Health assessment screenings from September 2010 to August 2011 found that nearly 17 in every 100 returning reservists had mental health problems that were serious enough to require a follow-up. That is 55 percent more likely than active-duty service members, according to the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center.
Active-duty troops come home to military bases with free, comprehensive medical care and support networks, while reservists do not have access to the same system
“A National Guard soldier . . . has anywhere from 10 to 14 days of demobilization training and processing,” explained Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, who retired on Feb. 1 as Army vice chief of staff. “Then we throw them back into their community to work with folks who are part of the 99 percent who never fought.”
Chiarelli said that plans are underway to provide better mental health care for reservists.
Still, in recent congressional testimony, Gen. McKinley of the National Guard Bureau praised recent moves to improve the treatment of National Guard members, but said: “We will have decades to go to make sure we do not leave any guardsman or woman behind.”
In the meantime, hundreds of thousands of men and women who have served the country will endure the consequences of inadequate support systems: Unemployment, underemployment, substance abuse, homelessness, incarceration — and suicide.