Training
Stress Exposure Training or SET is a common component of most modern military training. There are three steps to an effective stress exposure program.
- Providing Knowledge of the Stress Environment
Soldiers with a knowledge of both the emotional and physical signs and symptoms of CSR are much less likely to have a critical event that reduces them below fighting capability. Instrumental information, such as breathing exercises that can reduce stress and suggestions not to look at the faces of enemy dead, is also effective at reducing the chance of a breakdown.
- Skills Acquisition
Cognitive control strategies can be taught to soldiers to help them recognize stressful and situationally detrimental thoughts and repress those thoughts in combat situations. Such skills have been shown to reduce anxiety and improve task performance.
- Confidence Building Through Application and Practice
Soldiers who feel confident in their own abilities and those of their squad are far less likely to suffer from combat stress reaction. Training in stressful conditions that mimic those of an actual combat situation builds confidence in the abilities of themselves and the squad. As this training can actually induce some of the stress symptoms it seeks to prevent, stress levels should be increased incrementally as to allow the soldiers time to adapt.
Read more about this topic: Combat Stress Reaction, Treatment, Predeployment Preparation
Famous quotes containing the word training:
“They’ll bust you in the lobby. You look like a training poster for the narc squad.”
—John Guare (b. 1938)
“The want of education and moral training is the only real barrier that exists between the different classes of men. Nature, reason, and Christianity recognize no other. Pride may say Nay; but Pride was always a liar, and a great hater of the truth.”
—Susanna Moodie (1803–1885)
“Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man’s training begins, its probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)