CF Research on Assessing Mental Readiness for Deployment

[The Bread Guy]

Thought I'd share this:
http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/91394/post-907919#new
here in case anyone wanted to discuss it.

The interesting bit for me from the MSM coverage is the must-have link to something that may or may not have had anything to do with the real sequence of events:

The bio-psycho-social program seems like a good idea, but the military has tried in the past to vet its soldiers for non-physical attributes although perhaps in a less-scientific way, said Doug Bland, chairman of defence management studies at Queen's University and a retired lieutenant-colonel in the army.

Officers were expected to evaluate whether individual troops had their private lives and psyches in good order before they could be deployed, Prof. Bland said.

"You knew all your soldiers and you stood them up and said, ‘Bloggins is OK, but his mate is a nutcase and he's not going anywhere,' " he said. "The Canadian army, well back in its history, has always had some system for assessing individuals for overseas duties, and being very careful about their personal situations, whether they were getting divorced or whatever."

The system seemed to break down around the time the Canadian Airborne Regiment was dispatched to Somalia and became immersed in a scandal over abuse of prisoners, Prof. Bland said. The regiment had, to some extent, become a repository for troublemakers in the army. The Royal Commission that looked into the torture affair concluded that the assessment and preparation of Airborne members was poorly done, he said.

Also some discussion at Small Wars Journal on this as well.