AMedP-8.10 psychological guide for leaders across the deployment cycle

What it is

What AMedP-8.10 covers

AMedP-8.10, "A Psychological Guide for Leaders Across the Deployment Cycle", is NATO's guide for military leaders on supporting the psychological readiness of the people under their command through a deployment. Nations record their agreement to use it under STANAG 2565, so it binds through that ratified agreement rather than a contract or a law reaching into a supplier's own organization. The current edition, Edition B, Version 1, was promulgated in March 2026, revising the 2019 edition in light of a NATO technical report and lessons from recent conflicts, including the war in Ukraine. It "combines work conducted by the Chiefs of Military Medical Services (COMEDS) Military Mental Health Panel" with NATO's Human Factors and Medicine research, and nations approved it through the Military Committee Medical Standardization Board.

Who it is written for

The guide names its readers directly and repeatedly: it "provides military leaders with information and practical strategies for dealing with stress and the provision of psychological support to enhance unit effectiveness in modern military operations." No supplier, manufacturer or acquirer appears in it. It draws a firm line between the leader it addresses and the clinician it does not: leaders are told plainly that "leaders should not take on the role of a psychological support professional", even though they will often find themselves talking to someone going through a difficult time. A nation can ratify the underlying STANAG while recording its own reservations, and this edition already carries some against specific chapters.

How the guide is organised across the deployment cycle

The guide works through ten chapters. Chapter 2 sets out the leader's own role in psychological readiness: the ordinary and the more severe demands of deployment, and what training and day-to-day leadership can do about them. Chapter 3 covers managing expectations and communication, on the view that a gap between what people expect and what they get, more than any single event, is what erodes trust and unit morale. Chapter 4 covers individual psychological readiness: how leaders informally notice change in people they work alongside daily, and when a leader, rather than a clinician, decides that a concern is worth raising with a Mental Health Professional. Chapter 5 covers morale and unit effectiveness, including several ways a leader can assess unit climate, from informal contact through to structured surveys built jointly with Mental Health Professionals. Chapter 6 covers family readiness across what the guide calls the Emotional Cycle of Deployment: five stages running from pre-deployment through post-deployment, each with its own leader actions. "The pre-deployment stage begins with the warning order and ends when the unit member departs", and each later stage gets the same treatment. Chapter 7 addresses what leaders can do to support a unit through stress reactions to potentially traumatic events and other serious stressors, including the topics of self-harm and suicide, the leader's role after the death of a unit member, and support for people handling human remains; the guide is explicit that this work sits mostly with informal, leader-led and buddy-level support rather than with clinical treatment. Chapter 8 covers how to get the most out of Mental Health Professionals as a resource, and Chapter 9 concludes.

What leaders are responsible for, as distinct from clinicians

Across every chapter, the guide keeps to one division of labour: the leader sets conditions, notices change, and decides when to bring in help; the Mental Health Professional assesses, diagnoses and treats. "Military leadership has a key role to play in fostering and maintaining unit members' mental health across the deployment cycle", but the guide is equally clear that leaders are not expected to substitute for that professional judgement. In Chapter 2, the guide quotes a stated principle, attributed to AMedP-8.6, that "the psychological welfare of troops is primarily a chain of command responsibility" - a responsibility exercised through leadership itself (good example, competence, a caring attitude), not through clinical intervention. This document does not otherwise describe what AMedP-8.6 covers.

How you are evaluated

None. AMedP-8.10 names no certification body, no notified body, no self-declaration route and no customer audit. It is guidance for a national chain of command, not a scheme any organisation, product or individual is certified against. The nearest thing it carries to an evaluation mechanism is the national reservation recorded against a ratified STANAG: a nation can adopt the guide while formally recording where its own policy or culture departs from parts of it, as several nations have done against this edition. That is a diplomatic and military process between NATO and its member nations, not a third-party assessment of anyone.

Standards it references

• AMedP-8.6Background