Braceland Recap 2012

The day started off with a research presentation by LCDR Jeff Millegan on the special stress military children undergo as a result of geographic moves. Did you know that a child of a military parent moves 2.5 times more often than the general population? LCDR Patcho Santiago followed with his research on Army Master Resilience Training (MRT) in a population of Navy personnel. After MRT Navy subjects reported less resilience and lower morale, and the more MRT they got, the worse they did.

CAPT Robert Alonso got up after the morning break and gave a dense presentation on coming changes in Marine Corps forces and their impact on mental health requirements. The bottom line was that as dedicated Marine Corps medical billets are reduced, more TAD personnel requests from the Marine Corps to BUMED can be expected. LCDR Paul Sargent, along with LCDR Ken Richter, gave a compelling overview of San Diego's residential treatment program for PTSD. The program is quite impressive in its design and depth. It could become a model program depending on longitudinal outcomes, which we may hear about next year at the Braceland Seminar in San Francisco. The morning ended with CDR Curt West's description and reflections on the integration of the Army and Navy mental health departments at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. VADM Mateczun concluded with a macro perspective on the massive undertaking to merge the two hospitals, and he reminded us that the new medical center (which is truly huge), is the only military medical center mandated by law to be "world class."

The Sears Award went to CAPT Bill Hocter as its 23d recipient. In what one might call an "Oprah moment," just as Bill came to the front to receive the award, the door opened and Bill's wife, Annie, surprised him and came to stand by his side. Annie had flown to Philadelphia about an hour before just to be with him. Bill was nearly overwhelmed. Annie and Bill have nine children, and one attendee remarked that the Sears Award recognized Annie as much as Bill. A sentiment with which I am sure Bill would agree. Of the nominees this year Bill was the only one who spent his entire career in the trenches and never sought an executive position.

After a sumptuous buffet lunch we resumed with CAPT Gail Manos' annual state of the specialty talk. The good news was that deployments are trending down and training billets are increasing. Then we launched into nine short presentations by residents. All the presentations were polished and engaging, and reflected the high quality of our training programs.

I won't recap each resident presentation, but I will provide a vignette. In order to reduce resident anxiety, I always put the residents at the end when the milieu is less formal, and they have had all day to see how things go and get acquainted with the speaking environment. LT Chai Wu from San Diego told me ahead of time that she had extra speaking anxiety, so I put her alphabetically last on the schedule. When she rose to speak, she brought with her three packages of chocolate cupcake Tastykakes, original Philadelphia products that the hotel served as afternoon snacks. As she spoke, she quizzed the audience. When the first correct answer was shouted out, she lobbed a Tastykake across the room as a prize! I interrupted her from the back of the room, "I thought you said you were shy!?" One of her residency mates answered, "No, you misunderstood her, she said she was Chai." I think we all found out that she is Chai, and she is, in fact, not shy. It was a great way to end another successful Braceland Seminar.

The photo above of the Sears Award crystal trophy is courtesy of LT Chai Wu, who is the first to successfully photograph the crystal in sharp focus with a digital camera. Click to enlarge.