US military recruitment and psychological illness

[paperbackwriter]

I know that we have one or more recruiters here. My question is inspired by the story from Miami where a woman drove her car through her mother's patio door to retrieve her two children. Evidently the woman was separated from her children because of a long-standing bipolar disorder and lack of compliance with her medication regimen.

She is also temporarily separated from the Army. It's not clear to me from the article exactly what her status is. My question is more about how she was inducted in the first place. I thought that mental illness of almost any sort was something that excluded a person from the military. I was almost certain that illness as serious as this would be a disqualification. Wouldn't her recruiter have set her application aside for this reason? What are the mental-health standards for entering the Armed Forces?

[cher3]

Well, she could simply have lied. However, the military does grant waivers for things which would ordinarily disqualify you, in some cases. Examples would be misdemeanors, drug convictions (using, not selling), and so forth. I think that sometimes terms are set for acceptance. For example, a recovering alcoholic might need to show that he or she was attending AA meetings regularly.

Separation means that the paperwork for her discharge is put into the works. Whether or not she is actually discharged is the decision of her CO, among others. They are more careful in these days of low recruitment numbers and general litigiousness.

(Although, I think, in this case, the decision will be pretty clear.)

[bobkitty]

It doesn't say when she was diagnosed, or when she joined the army. She may have been able to hide her symptomology well enough to get enlisted. I had a patient who was actively enlisted, relatively high-ranking Navy who, when I saw him, was waaaaaaay out of his right mind. He was also diagnosed bipolar, and although he'd recently been released from a vet hospital for some pretty significant delusions he hadn't been discharged from the Navy.