When the USS Abraham Lincoln returns to San Diego in coming weeks after an extraordinary deployment, the city will rightly celebrate its sailors and Marines. A festive homecoming should not be mistaken for recovery.<\/p>\n
The carrier departed San Diego on Nov. 21, 2025, made only a brief Guam stop in December, and then spent more than 270 consecutive days at sea before docking in Thailand on Wednesday. The crew of 5,000 sailors and Marines operated under a punishing tempo of 60-hour-plus workweeks: long shifts, rotating watches, disrupted sleep, limited personal time, prolonged separation from families and the uncertainty that comes with a deployment extended far beyond normal limits. Reports of shortages, low morale and mental-health concerns compel urgency, not speculation, stigma or political point-scoring.<\/p>\n
The question for San Diego and the Navy is not whether every member of the Lincoln crew will return with post-traumatic stress disorder. They will not. PTSD is a clinical diagnosis, not a label to attach to an entire ship\u2019s company after a demanding deployment. It requires an individual assessment of trauma exposure, symptoms, duration and functional impairment.<\/p>\n
It would be equally wrong to wait for a crisis or to expect sailors and Marines to prove they are in crisis before offering care, support and treatment. Extended deployments can produce a broad range of psychological and behavioral-health concerns: insomnia, exhaustion, anxiety, depression, substance misuse, irritability, grief, relationship strain, moral injury and thoughts of self-harm. Some personnel may experience acute stress reactions that ease with rest, reconnection and support. Others may develop persistent symptoms later, after the operational demands are gone and they finally have room to process what happened to them.<\/p>\n
The Navy\u2019s response must be layered, confidential and sustained. First, every returning member of the strike group should receive post-deployment health screening, with follow-up rather than a one-time questionnaire. The U.S. Department of the Navy uses deployment health assessments to identify possible PTSD, depression, substance misuse and other concerns. Those screenings matter, but they are only a doorway. A positive screen must lead quickly to a qualified clinician, and a negative screen should not close the door on future care. The Navy should repeat confidential check-ins after personnel have returned home for 30 days, 90 days and beyond. Symptoms can emerge gradually.<\/p>\n
Second, the Navy must separate care from punishment. Service members often worry that admitting distress will damage their careers, limit duties or cause others to see them as weak. That fear is not solved by a poster campaign. Leaders must make clear, repeatedly and credibly, that seeking help is a readiness decision, not a failure of character.<\/p>\n
Commanders must protect confidentiality wherever possible, avoid treating mental-health appointments as evidence of poor performance, and ensure that referrals do not become bureaucratic dead ends. Peer leaders, chief petty officers, officers, chaplains and family-readiness staff all have a role in normalizing care.<\/p>\n
Third, the Navy should expand access to evidence-based treatment and offer resilience training. Personnel with PTSD need timely evaluation and valid therapies such as cognitive processing therapy, prolonged exposure therapy and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, with medication available when clinically appropriate. Those who do not meet PTSD criteria may still need treatment for depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, substance use or family conflict.<\/p>\n
The Navy\u2019s decision to send additional resiliency counselors and social workers to the\u00a0Lincoln\u00a0was appropriate. So were the existing resources aboard the ship: chaplains, behavioral-health personnel, a psychologist, a social worker and prevention staff. The decisive test is whether support continues after the ship ties up. The most difficult phase begins ashore.<\/p>\n
San Diego is well positioned to help. Fleet and Family Support Centers can assist with reintegration, counseling and family stress. Navy medicine can provide clinical care. The Vet Center offers confidential readjustment counseling for eligible service members, veterans and families. Technology such as AI-enabled applications may support symptom check-ins, sleep tracking, safety planning and rapid connection to human care. A service member in distress needs a trusted person, a skilled clinician and a clear path to care more than a chatbot.<\/p>\n
San Diego should welcome the Lincoln home with flags, families, friends, music and an immense display of gratitude. All this followed by the harder work to ensure every sailor and Marine has the time, privacy and treatment needed to come home psychologically and physically. They put their lives on the line and deserve our unconditional support. Even battle-tested warriors need tender, loving care.<\/p>\n
Caruso, Ph.D., is a certified counselor and a U.S. Army veteran. He was a visiting professor at the University of Southern California and served on military installations in Europe and the Pacific.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the USS Abraham Lincoln returns to San Diego in coming weeks after an extraordinary deployment, the city…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":453386,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[964,975,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-453385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-commentary","tag-opinion","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}