WASHINGTON - A new concussion care program being fielded by the Marine Corps in Afghanistan is giving psychiatrists, physicians and even chaplains and sergeants a better way to treat those with the No. 1 battle injury, military combat medicine experts said today.

Navy Cmdr. (Dr.) Charles Benson, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force psychiatrist and 1st Marine Division's deputy surgeon, and Navy Cmdr. (Dr.) Keith Stuessi, director of the Concussion Restoration Care Center at Camp Leatherneck in Afghanistan, spoke with Pentagon reporters in a video teleconference.

The Navy-Marine Corps effort, launched in August and called the Operational Stress Control and Readiness Program, or OSCAR, has two parts, Benson said.

"The first part [includes] psychiatrists and psychologists who we field with the combat team," Benson explained. "These are organic embedded assets in the division's regiments and battalions. They live with the troops, train with the troops and get out in the field with them."

Such an arrangement, he added, "allows the Marines to come forward to the psychologists and psychiatrists [and] kind of breaks down the barriers and allows the [providers] to become very effective at ... delivering mental health care."

The second part of the program offers special training to medical officers, corpsmen, chaplains, religious personnel and key leaders at the sergeant and first sergeant level so they can deliver basic mental health care to troops in harm's way.

"Those folks constantly monitor their Marines," Benson said, "helping them with simple issues and understanding at what point [a Marine with an injury] needs to be referred back for more comprehensive care."

Together, the programs "have generated quite a bit of success out here in Afghanistan," the psychiatrist said, treating concussions and musculoskeletal injuries -- the No. 1 nonbattle injuries of the war.

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