GAO: DEFENSE HEALTH CARE - Additional Efforts Needed to Ensure Compliance with Personality Disorder Separation Requirements

GAO: DEFENSE HEALTH CARE - Additional Efforts Needed to Ensure Compliance with Personality Disorder Separation Requirements

Highlights of GAO-09-31, a report to congressional addressees

At DOD, a personality disorder can render a servicemember unsuitable for service. GAO was required to report on personality disorder separations and examined (1) the extent that selected military installations complied with DOD’s separation requirements and (2) how DOD ensures compliance with these requirements. GAO reviewed a sample of 312 servicemembers’ records from four installations, representing the Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps, that had the highest or second highest number of Operation Enduring Freedom or Operation Iraqi Freedom servicemembers separated because of a personality disorder. The review is generalizable to the installations, but not to the services. GAO also reviewed 59 Navy service members’ records, but this review is not generalizable to the installation or the Navy because parts of the separation process could have been completed at multiple locations.

What GAO Recommends
GAO recommends that DOD (1) ensure that the services’ personality disorder separations comply with DOD’s requirements and (2) monitor the services’ compliance. DOD concurred with GAO’s first recommendation and partially concurred with the other. DOD stated that it will strengthen policy guidance for the services’ compliance reporting, but stated that it is the responsibility of the services to ensure compliance. However, GAO’s review indicates that reliance on the services is insufficient to ensure compliance.

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Department of Defense (DoD), GAO