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Study: 77% of young Americans too fat, mentally ill, on drugs to join military
- meling 4y agoMaybe military service could help some of these folks out of their unfortunate situation, given a longer training period and proper support.
- toomuchtodo 4y agoThe Marines slimmed my brother down but gave him a variety of mental health issues. I preferred him overweight, happy, and more functional. These are self inflicted wounds, high level. They don’t qualify because of the system we’ve built. Want healthy candidates for soldiers? Optimize for affordable nutrition and universal healthcare/mental health access [1] [2] [3] [4]. Don’t? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Rampant obesity rates and drug use continues. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30908249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30908249 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35385503 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35385503 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35365440 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35365440 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35039709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35039709
- Apocryphon 4y agoI wonder how service in the National Guard or Coast Guard compares to the other branches. Or even the Air Force.
- CSMastermind 4y agoEveryone has their own experiences but I will say that joining the Marines was the best thing that ever happened to me and I would openly recommend it to any young man.
- toomuchtodo 4y agoQuite literally survivorship bias. Anecdotes aside, the statistics are damning. https://stopsoldiersuicide.org/vet-stats https://stopsoldiersuicide.org/vet-stats > Over 40,000 veterans are homeless on any given night > Veterans are at 57% higher risk of suicide than those who haven't served. > "Depending on branch, up to 31% of service members develop PTSD after returning from combat." ; "The rate of suicide for veterans in the LGBTQ+ community is up to 7x higher than for non-LGBTQ+ veterans." ; "More than 40% of female veterans report experiencing military sexual harassment or military sexual trauma." https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/us/911-suicide-rate-veterans.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/us/911-suicide-rate-veter... > "Suicides among post-9/11 veterans are four times as high as combat deaths, a new study finds." > Since 2001, more than 114,000 veterans have died by suicide (first citation link indicates this is now 125k+) You would recommend something that leads to these outcomes? To young adults?
- BobbyJo 4y agoThose numbers don't mean much in isolation. 81% of women broadly experience sexual harassment in their lifetimes. Veterinarians are 400% more likely to commit suicide than general population. You have to put the risks of serving in context. Of course being a part of a military carries more risks than most/all desk jobs, but it's not the worst thing ever and helps a lot of people. I have an uncle that has a great life because service, and a half-brother that hated it and washed out barely worse for wear. Anecdotes are just as good as random stats without context.
- lurquer 4y ago> You would recommend something that leads to these outcomes? An inability to provide for oneself or to self-motivate are factors that lead to enlistment. You have it backwards. For the most part — particularly the Army — the service is very expensive daycare for would-be homeless bums.
- BobbyJo 4y ago> For the most part — particularly the Army — the service is very expensive daycare for would-be homeless bums. It's unfortunate you feel that way about young men and women who are looking for direction and a path to a better future. Whether or not it works out for them, most people join the military expecting to work hard and get something in return, which doesn't conjure "bum" to me.
- vkou 4y agoWhatever health issues you may or may not have had before joining the military, it's often quite happy to give you a few new ones before you're out. Exposure to toxic chemicals, PTSD, or combat injuries, take your pick.
- hindsightbias 4y agoI wonder if our prison folk are healthier than Wagners.
- throwaway9980 4y agoWe have twice their population and double their propensity to incarcerate, so it’s our top 25% versus their total gen pop. America wins again.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nebulousthree 4y agoPMCs love this study!
- onigiri420 4y agoBig food companies pushing carbs while funding anti-low carb diet studies have nothing to do with it.
- Apocryphon 4y agoWhat if the military-industrial complex declared war against the food industry to increase the ranks of viable recruits. A great lobbyists' war.
- AverageDude 4y agoOr maybe they will just push for robots.
- hombre_fatal 4y agoThe meat industry is so big and powerful that they have ag-gag laws that stop you from even reporting on them. Weird how the no-carb social media tribe acts like they’re the underdogs. But this comment just seems like a way to force your favorite pet issue to e-fight over into the conversation.
- syeare 4y agoFunding anti-low carb studies? Personally I advocate for lower carb diets in general but do you have evidence for that claim?
- defrost 4y agoThere's a qualification of some importance missing here: 77% of young Americans who applied ... were rejected for various reasons. ie: Most young people who want to join the forces don't meet the minimum standards. Perhaps the vast bulk of people that do meet those standards see no future for themselves in the US forces and don't apply. And there's no easily teased out figure on the health of young Americans in general here w/out additional info about application rates and demographics.
- htag 4y ago1. "Drug use" probably includes soft drugs like cannabis. 2. Basically any diagnosis of a mental health condition, like ADHD, will block military service. This is true even if symptoms are well managed without medication. The rise of diagnosis of these conditions combined with digital records means a lot of people are prohibited to join due to mental health that would have been overlooked in previous decades. 3. This serves as the official excuse for why recruitment numbers are down. IMO recruitment numbers are down because Iraq/Afghanistan was such a shitshow.
- bnjms 4y agoRe: #2 that’s ridiculous. Diagnosis like ADHD might as well be diagnosable personality traits.
- hotpotamus 4y agoADHD is the weirdest diagnosis out there in my opinion. I know I can certainly concentrate better when I'm taking amphetamines of one sort or other. Does that mean that I have ADHD or does it just mean that that's what amphetamines do?
- bnjms 4y agoMy belief is that amphetamines help everybody focus and the powers that be needed a story that’s just so to rationalize giving drugs to kids. But the benefit for people with ADHD is greater than the benefit to people with normal amounts of concentration/executive function. What I want to know is do people “without adhd” also feel the sense of peace and calm with a cessation of the need to constantly fidget and move?
- mkolodny 4y agoDoes "drug use" include coffee? Alcohol?
- htag 4y agoCoffee: no Alcohol: It includes a level of alcohol abuse, but I'm not sure how they draw the line.
- 13of40 4y agoIt would be interesting to see how many of the remaining 23% are in the slice of society where a military career makes financial sense. When I joined the Army I was going from having been fired from McD's last month to making $1K a month with food and shelter taken care of. That made sense at the time. My kid is plenty skinny, mentally stable, and drug free, but he's also a successful college student and budding entrepreneur, so he's not going to be wearing a uniform unless we go full WW3 conscription.
- jackcosgrove 4y agoI was speaking with an advertiser who was somehow involved in the return of "Be All You Can Be". He stated that military recruitment is highly sensitive to unemployment rates. Unemployment is very low now, especially for entry level and service roles that would hire an unskilled 18 year old.
- throwaway892238 4y agoNot a big difference, but I note that this is without a waiver. There is a process for getting a waiver for each branch[1]. There aren't a ton of waivers issued - only between 50,000 and 80,000 [2]. But the DoD is reviewing what can be removed as disqualifying (at least 38 disqualifying conditions) and multiple reports have been issued signaling out ADHD and marijuana as potential criteria to eliminate[3]. Personally I think it should come down to the role and risk. There's plenty of jobs where you're not seeing combat or dealing with inherently risky or critical tasks, and thus shouldn't be held to the same standard as those doing critical tasks. Just as one obvious example, somebody with a desk job doesn't need legs. [1] https://www.operationmilitarykids.org/military-medical-waiver-guide/ https://www.operationmilitarykids.org/military-medical-waive... [2] https://serialpodcast.org/maps/number-of-waivers-given-to-us-army-recruits https://serialpodcast.org/maps/number-of-waivers-given-to-us... [3] https://www.rand.org/blog/rand-review/2021/10/army-enlistment-waivers-in-the-age-of-legal-marijuana.html https://www.rand.org/blog/rand-review/2021/10/army-enlistmen...
- Animats 4y agoRAND study on this: [1] Recommendation: "To mitigate the higher likelihood of adverse performance-related outcomes, require that waivered recruits and those with a documented history of marijuana or behavioral health issues have Tier 1 education status, have Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) scores in categories I–IIIA, or be age 22 or older." "Tier I education status" means high school graduation. AFQT scores of IIIA or above means above the median intelligence for the military. [1] https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR4431.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR4431.html
- Zurrrrr 4y agoAnd then you have those with higher education and critical thinking capabilities who wouldn't ever join the military... That aside, these stats are not surprising. Anyone from outside the US knows just how bad the education system is within. With red states outright banning books and knowledge, that number may just continue to climb.
- throwaway9980 4y agoPeople who remove books from libraries are scared pitiful people. People who claim that removing some books from a library is akin to banning or will have any affect on the actual dissemination of knowledge are fools at best and liars almost surely. Education is like everything else. If you believe it is someone or something else’s responsibility, you won’t have much of it.
- Zurrrrr 4y ago100% agree.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Atlas22 4y agoCurious, which bannings you are referring to? I thought this was a thing of the past.
- Zurrrrr 4y agoHonestly, your comment makes me wonder if there is any kind of site or project keeping track of that (because there should be), because I saw a headline recently but can't remember any specifics. Searching 'book banning' on news.google.com still returns a lot of results with towns still doing it. I think what I was actually thinking of though, was I think Mississippi (I think) deciding to defund all libraries in retaliation for the library suing over book bans.
- Connor_Creegan1 4y ago
- photochemsyn 4y agoJoining the military means giving up most of your civilian rights laid out in the Bill of Rights, in exchange for pay and training. Historically, this has often been a pretty good deal for those without other economic options. However, if you think the country's leaders are going to send you off to get killed in poorly thought-out and reckless adventures for dubious reasons, then giving up those rights starts looking less and less attractive. Given that's what happened in Afghanistan (which was somewhat justifiable, but could have been a six-month operation, rather than a 20-year one) and Iraq (completely unjustifiable, an epic disaster), it's not surprising that economic desperation is now the main motivator for military recruiting, nor is it surprising that applicants coming from that background aren't in the best mental or physical health. Step one in regaining trust would involve purging the government and military leadership of the architects of the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan, although that seems unlikely at present - these are the same neocon ideologues who are vigorously opposing a negotiated settlement in eastern Ukraine while also pushing for military confrontation with China.
- riffraff 4y agoDo you believe the wars other than Iraq and Afghanistan were better? I mean sure, less Americans died but the gulf war reportedly caused 180k permanently disabled US soldiers, mostly PTSD I believe. And the Vietnam war was pretty notorious for being bad for the US. It seems to me every generation got a reckless and dubious war, tho the war on terror was insanely bad.
- uxcolumbo 4y agoWhat do you mean regarding Ukraine? Do you mean the US should have persuaded Ukraine to give up some of their land? I don’t fully understand what you mean with ‘negotiated settlement’. All I know is these ‘negotiating’ strategies don’t work with tyrannical regimes. Germany tried and failed. Trying to bring in China into the world economy also didn’t seem to make them give up their hunger to swallow Taiwan. The mindset of these dictators is different… see Bill Browder’s writings on this subject.
- uni_rule 4y ago
- drewcoo 4y agoDo all or even most of these people need to be fit for warfighting, by any standards?
- greesil 4y agoDon't worry they lower recruiting standards during economic boom times. Gotta hit those recruiter targets.
- trilbyglens 4y agoThe fact that this guy says that membership and veteran numbers are low is utterly insane. No where on this planet will you see more military bumperstickers, wounded warriors, etc than in the US. It wild how visible the military is in America, but apparently that's not good enough.
- hunglee2 4y agoI wonder how much of this is due to outdated assessment criteria. If drone and remote control is the future of warfare there may not be too much need to do 20 push-ups on demand - the fat kid staring into the computer screen could quite feasibly the warrior of the next war.
- volvogradSaint 4y agoNever thought that the solution to America's Military Industrial complex would be McDonalds. Now when the Joint Chiefs talk of megatons they are talking about recruits weight not weapon payload.
- roxgib 4y agoIf someone is overweight, but otherwise healthy (which I suspect is the case for a lot of young people, as they haven't been overweight long enough for it to take a big toll on the body) can they not go ahead and enrol them and then whip them into shape during training? If they are really aren't able to meet their recruiting targets it seems like a missed opportunity.
- landemva 4y agoIt may depend how overweight and if the person is otherwise fit. A fat guy in my platoon had last name 'Lay' which led to hilarious potato chip and family history rants by instructors. He lost a lot of fat.
- rcarr 4y agoIf there’s a proper war e.g an existential one like Ukraine is experiencing, all this goes out the window and it’s any man aged 16-65 that can stand and hold a gun.
- rascul 4y agoStandards to join the US Military are flexible. When I enlisted, my recruiter explained that I could get a waiver for just about anything short of murder. I did get a couple waivers. How willing they are to give waivers depends completely on their recruitment goals.