Using reserve units to ease the transition from service

What change could improve mental-health support when personnel leave the armed forces?

Keep them linked to a local reserve unit for six to eighteen months as non-deployable instructors, providing a transition period and continuing peer support.

The proposal is to attach departing personnel to a local reserve unit for six to eighteen months as non-deployable instructors. Evening instruction could provide some paid work and fill a reserve training need while keeping the individual connected to a familiar community. That local connection would also give colleagues an opportunity to notice difficulties during the adjustment to civilian life. Alex recalls former NCOs who found such contact helpful, including a crisis about a year after leaving that another NCO noticed. The arrangement is proposed as a way to use an existing organization without first creating a new veterans' bureaucracy.