Holding forth is way different than bluster. Yours is the former. In truthtelling, just my .02, a rant or two are required from time to time, just to clear off all trivia and cut right back down to the heartwood.

To be capable of outrage is still a virtue in my book; esp after a person has been assaulted day in and day out by the culture's rote interpretation of all matters, attempting to not only un-truth everything, but also unsoul everything. Maybe those are the same thing.

Point is, being stuck in perpetual rant (which you're not), and rant as a bridge to keep going… are way different from one another.

beblessed

dr.e

………..and then I read in the paper how every day this war has coming home soldiers committing homicide, mostly suicide at alarming rates, — to the point of predictability, to the point, if a society was concerned about releasing violent prisoners on parole, they should be concerned, if not for the soldier than for the society, that they are ticking time bombs, the weight of one foot still on a land mine trying to live a civilized life.

…….and then I read, not about reducing the diagnosis from more severe(PTSD) to mild and temporary (adjustment disorder), but to add and suggest that the frightening spiral of PTSD is caused more from weaknesses in the personality or said plainly, from Personality disorders. A character flaw, exposed when the soldier saw or experienced too much, too much injustice, too much rape, too much slaughter, too many unknown enemies– so much so the soldiers brainwashing fails, the warrior training fades, and underneath is a human being no longer able to parse or even make sense of most anything. And the questions, the regrets, the deeds done, play over and over, often with profound regret…….This is where help is desperately needed for left to his own devices, the veteran in this depleted state, the soldier will likely condemn himself for not being able to live up to the code of soldiers or the code of humanity. There is no place for him, no where to go.

So it is embarrassing to hear talk of patriotism on the front end, and then a disappearance of it on the back end. It is the ultimate card trick, leaving bitterness and ruin in its wake.

I apologize too, for the rant, but if one is affected, directly or indirectly, it is difficult to contain the associated rage and shame that bubbles up and over.

If there is a silver lining to be found in the Viet Nam war, it is that we have come to feel shame about how the returning soldiers were 'welcomed' home.

It doesn't look like we have learned enough yet.
The voices that refuse to be silent are imporving the odds that we will rise to the occasion this time.
. .

Generally speaking, that is not the function of the V.A.

Specifically speaking, in terms of PTSD or any psychiatric ailment that might in any way be related to one's service in the armed forces, that most certainly is not what the V.A. is about.

When a veteran goes to the V.A. for assistance with any issues (but especially psychiatric issues being as they much easier to dismiss – dare I say “disprove”) that he/she is suffering from due to their stay in one of our services, the job for the V.A. doctors, nurses, and psychiatrists is to prove that the veteran has no problem that can be associated with their tour of duty.

AND they will go to any length's to prove that the vet has no service related issue.

This can and does include lying, manipulating, false reporting, mismedicating (with intent), and the drugging of veterans so that when they have to appear in the V.A. court (of appeals – because, of course, they've been turned down repeatedly) they can't even speak correctly due to being massively over medicated.

When a veteran is hospitalized for that dubious condition known as “PTSD,” the nurses actually wander the ward to spy on the vet in an attempt to “catch them” in a less than “psychotic or depressed moment” and when they do (because even the worst of psychotics have lucid moments and even the worst of depressives have times they aren't sobbing) they DOCUMENT it copiously.

Trying to explain to the doctors or nurses that it's not so much about psychosis or even depression but more about being lost in this tunnel of forever fear in a place usually referred to as hell, will not help the veteran.
And the veteran is in double trouble here because they've entered into the system with trust and hope, thinking that the doctor's are there to help them.

Well, they're not!

They want you gone. They want you to disappear and go live on the streets. It's preferable that the veteran commits suicide rather than get a gov't check.

It is their job to make sure that our gov't does not have to pay any sum of money to some ridiculous person who's so weak that they just “can't get over it!” (sarcasm intended)

I actually have heard a V.A. doctor say those words to a depressed veteran, btw.

“Can't you just get over it!”

No. Some vets cannot get over it. Some veterans are doomed to a forever world of sorrow, nightmares and grief due to things that happened during their stay in our illustrious service.

And some doctor's are hired to be liars in an hospital system (V.A.) that is already populated with less than scrupulous people.

As for the faking of psychiatric illness…
My take on the faking of PTSD and/or any psychiatric illness comes from a discussion I had with V.A. nurse who was quitting her job due to the callous mistreatment of veterans by other staff members.
Veterans that she was trying to help.

When I asked her, “Well, what can be done about the fraudulent claims? The idea of people trying to get a psych diagnosis just to get on the dole is causing outrage in the general population.”

Her reply: “Just how psychologically healthy do you think a person is if they want to be supported by the public to sit at home looking at the walls? We have 30, 40 year old individuals coming in here that have lost everything they've ever owned, their homes, their families, marriages, kids, name it, all gone. They cannot function at work. Life as they knew it is over for these people. Just how healthy do you think these people are?”

How healthy indeed!
I think that for many people if they can't see the illness, it must not exist. PTSD and psych related illnesses that have been brought on by one's service (or you became ill while serving) are not easily seen and hard to treat.

Which brings me to another observation.

PTSD needs therapy more than it needs medicine (my opinion I'm sure but…).
Medicine does not seem to help these people very much but that is, for the most part, all they're going to receive at the V.A.
(I do not call going into a crafts room to make “leather wallets” therapy).

The V.A. does not supply much in terms of 'therapy.” It's about meds and LOTS of meds at that.

Perhaps if the V.A. was invested in helping veterans suffering with PTSD this might change but as I said…

Helping veterans is not what the V.A. is about. Proving their claims to be false so that the taxpayers can feel happy and secure while cutting services to the vets is what the V.A.
An aside…
In the 1990s alone when I was living in the SF Bay Area, Martinez VA was shut down (save for ER services), Livermore VA was closed down (save for ER services), an ungodly amount of clinics were closed at both Fort Miley VA and Palo Alto VA so that veterans were on waiting lists that went upwards from six months to a year. They did this dispite the reports that the Gulf War veterans were getting “ill,” and even as I arrived in my new state, they closed the V.A. hospital in the city that I'm living in (two weeks after I arrived in 2000).

Sorry for my rant.