A friend told me this, info she's received from her husband, who was in the Army:

[elleng]

'If you're found to have ANY mental illness, ANY, you are immediately taken away from weapons and put on desk duty. It's a known fact in the Army. I can't speak for any other branch, but he told me that was fact.'

[doc03]

1. Here we give them more guns n/t

[TwilightGardener]

2. That may be true. I don't know if it's still that way, but getting mental health

care while on active duty used to be a strike against your career--for getting things like security clearances, for example. Edit to add: they do screen pretty hard now for PTSD, so it may have changed for the better recently--hope so.

[VanillaRhapsody]

3. take 2 Baretta's and call us in the morning..

[UTUSN]

4. I sort of doubt much diagnosis or screening is done unless symptoms are too obvious to ignore n/t

[uppityperson]

5. Like Steven D Green? Since he was known to have "issues" before this, why wasn't he taken away from

weapons? Maybe in some cases and some places, but good lord there is a HELL of a lot of PTSD and mental health issues with soldiers in the field.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Dale_Green#Steven_Dale_Green

[elleng]

6. Good questions.

Don't know.

[moondust]

7. I remember a kid in basic training

who took his clothes off while our company was out at the rifle range! Buck naked in early Spring, still pretty cool out! He was taken away and spent a few weeks on office duty while they processed his discharge. That was quite a few years ago.

Weird stuff can happen.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

8. B.S. Not in a war zone. Bush wrecking of troop morale caused army to

Drag the bottom of the barrel. And gave them guns.