War Psychiatry

This volume of the Textbook of Military Medicine addresses the delivery of mental health services during wartime. The foreseeable future of the U.S. military includes the potential for involvement in a variety of conflicts, ranging from peace-keeping missions to massive deployments of personnel and materiel and possible nuclear, biological, and chemical threats as was seen in the Persian Gulf War. The medical role in wartime is critical to success of the mission. For the mental health disciplines, this role encompasses identification and elimination of unfit personnel, improvement of marginal personnel to standards of acceptability, prevention of psychiatric casualties, and their treatment when prevention fails. All of these efforts must be guided by past experience and sound principles of human behavior.