The Challenges of Mental Health Today. Every year 1 in 4 adults - approximately 61.5 million Americans - experiences mental illness in a given year however, less than one-third of those individuals will receive treatment for these disorders. National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health Statistics: Any Disorder among Adults. Retrieved March 5, 2013, from http://www.nimh.nih.gov/statistics/1ANYDIS_ADULT.shtml. For calendar year 2013, the DOD Suicide Event Report (DoDSER) reported that 479 service members (259 Active Component / 220 Selected Reserve) took their lives by committing suicide. Traditional mental health assessments can be expensive, time consuming, and are difficult to administer. Typically a military member can be reluctant to undertake such evaluation. In order to impact the mental health and decrease suicide rates in our military population, we must change what we are doing and make mental health assessments comfortable for our military members to take – COTS solutions with rich artificial intelligence are available now to do this!

Our military member’s deserve only the best when it comes to mental health support! Military members are challenged differently than the average American citizen. We need to reverse the startling statistic of military member suicides and improve their overall wellbeing – COTS solutions are available with improved artificial intelligence and portability on an IPAD.