[Dilbert San Diego]

I have no military experience so don’t know all the personal feelings of deployment and coming home and all that.

But I figure they could do these programs after the troops come home. Maybe when they are back home back at home base they could attend classes and meetings on these subjects?

If these programs help prevent mental health problems that’s great. But I bet the guys are eager to get home not spend another 30 days somewhere to prepare to come home.

[oh8eleven]

they could do these programs after the troops come home.
It's not like they didn't already exist.
When I left VN in '68, we stayed on Okinawa for 5 days. It essentially was a 5 day drunk.
But as it was explained when we first got there, we were there to decompress and to get ready for life back in The World - even the stateside military world. And we did have meetings to that effect.
A year later I was getting discharged and I had to attend a meeting called Operation Transition. Its purpose was to prepare us for entry back into the civilian world and I thought it helped a lot - especially when you consider what the civilian world was like in '69.