However, to do the soldiers a "favor" and not burden them with a diagnosis that will stick with them for the rest of their life, they are "helping" them. This way they can still apply to become Police Officers, Guards at Prisons, and other such jobs where they are allowed to handle firearms. A PTSD diagnosis ends your ability to handle weapons for a living.
This article on PTSD shows that the Republican Congress and the VA are only providing lip service to getting a handle on PTSD for the Iraqi war vets. It proves that funding for mental health is down 8%, when you factor in medical inflation the number is actually 25%, and more and more veterans are shwoing up at the VA asking for help with PTSD. If they are lucky, they get an appointment within a year.
[On March 25, around the time Padilla grappled with his first nightmare http://www.longislandpress.com/... ], the House Appropriations Subcommittee on HUD and Independent Agencies was getting bad news about the very services designed to help him. Dr. James Scully, M.D., medical director of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), which monitors spending by the VA on mental health services, reported that since 1996, spending had declined by 8 percent. Adjusted for inflation, spending was down 25 percent.
Scully, a Navy veteran, told the committee the reduction was particularly "startling" because it came when there were more vets using the VA for mental health than ever--nearly half a million. Between 1996 and 2001 there had been a 42 percent explosion in patients with severe PTSD, but only a 22 percent increase in money spent on PTSD services. The troubling information came as no surprise. After all, the Independent Budget, a consortium of veterans' groups and advocates, was saying the same thing. In addition, Congress had heard warnings for years.
"For too long, mental health care has not been a priority for the VA," Scully said.
A mammoth, federally funded agency, the VA's health care system had treated veterans since 1945, charging a sliding fee based on a vet's condition and its connection to time in the armed forces. But after the first Gulf War, the soaring cost of civilian health care combined with the aging of World War II, Korea and Vietnam vets pushed droves of service personnel to the VA. Between 1996 and 2003, the VA saw a 134 percent increase in vets seeking medical care, but received only a 44 percent boost in federal money"""
The numbers in the next paragraph how alarming under funded the VA truly is despite the Republicans claim they raised funding for veterans by 54% since President Bush took office.
[This is the story of an Army Reserve Major and what his life has become since going to war http://www.scrippsnews.com/... ]:
He hears about the people who volunteer to go back to Iraq for second and third tours. He thinks he knows why.
"It's a sign of PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder)," he said during a phone conversation last week from Pennsylvania.
"That's the last place life made sense. Here, they don't fit in. They're not part of anything."
Sounds crazy, doesn't it? Iraq, with its treacherous uncertainty, its roadside bombs and maddeningly invisible enemy, makes more sense than the familiar things of home.
To understand, at least a little, consider the homecoming of this man, who is 44 and spent a lot of years as a cop and joined the military because he needed some direction in his life. He is a major in the Army reserve.
It is disturbing by that not enough is being done for the men and women being sent to war, in our names. When they come home, they are denied the proper care and compassion they deserve.
Yes, I to suffer from PTSD, I was seeing a VA shrink monthly until this war started, and over time it went to every other month, now it is every three months, soon I expect it will be twice a year, their motto is medicate the vet. ... and Next?
Comments are closed on this story.