Reintegration Beyond the Medical Model: The Case of Warfighter Advance.

Abstract

All military members are "enhanced" relative to civilians counterparts roughly in three levels (original to author). Regardless of the level of enhancement, learning and cumulative experience permanently change in the individual warfighter creating specific challenges when faced with reintegration to garrison life, civilian communities, and their families. At this point, warfighters are encouraged to seek medical assistance, an approach that does not come without a high toll on the individual. Warfighter Advance was developed by a cohort of experienced warfighters who found the psychiatric paradigm of reintegration to be inadequate, reductionistic and doomed to fail on the individual level, with some aspects flatly unethical. Warfighter Advance is not an alternative treatment, but an alternative to treatment full stop. Warfighter Advance is an alternative to the medical model, and a normative blueprint for how the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and others should view and approach warfighter reintegration.