More than 700 recruits with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have been allowed to sign up US military for the first time after the Defense Department rewrote its rules on which medical conditions would bar applicants from joining.
US military decided in June to allow the enlistment of recruits suffering from 38 medical conditions that were previously automatic disqualifiers – including congenital heart defects and tuberculosis – provided that for between three and seven years prior to signing up they hadn’t demonstrated symptoms or needed treatment for those conditions.
Under the revamped rules, these trainees were hired without a waiver that could be a pathway for potential recruits who have confronted mental-health issues or some other developmental condition.
Noting that they have to be cations, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said that the army would assess the program’s effectiveness after a year of service by the recruits with mental health conditions.
Wormuth said the army has to constantly be refreshing its approach and looking at conditions in society.
She pointed out earlier in October that since only 23% of young Americans (16-21-year-olds) are meeting the US military’s fitness standards and only 9% of them are actually interested in joining in the first place, it is currently hiring from an increasingly unfit population.
According to Wormuth, the Pentagon has this year lowered its standards amid the most significant shortfall in enlistment since 1973 which resulted not only from the decline in fitness but also from previously imposed Covid-19 vaccine mandate as well as way more tempting job offers from the private sector.
The Army experienced fell a shortfall of 25% – 15,000 soldiers short of its 60,000 target – at the end of the 2022 fiscal year but also struggling to meet recruitment targets are both the Navy and, surprisingly, the Marine Corps that – at the beginning of October- had only secured about 30% for 2023 although it usually has about half of its target achieved at the beginning of each fiscal year.
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