Perhaps the tide about how we treat our returning soldiers is changing. Finally. After decades of high military denial. A new report has just been released contravening the VA’s stance on PTSD in soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, saying it is much more prevalent than the military has admitted.
You might recall much said about not awarding the Purple Heart to men and woman who are wounded in soul and spirit and mind by seeing /hearing/ being in war.
You might also remember much said about the memo written by a head VA officer telling her diagnostic staff to bypass the diagnosis of PTSD for vets returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, to not make those diagnoses at all, in order to save the government money.
Yet, it has always been that the men and women deployed gave it everything they had, even though, once home and wounded, often in more ways than one, the VA wanted to play VA Roulette with their lives… disparaging their issues, and thereby withholding treatment and… recovery. For those who gave it their all.
Where have we heard this before? Nam? Yes. Korea? Yes. World War II? Yes. First World War? Yes.
As I write this, Ms. Liz Cheney and James Carville on CNN as adversaries, are both nodding and averring that the VA gives excellent health care to veterans, ‘really excellent health care.’ This is not different from what Senator Murtha bragged about back at the beginning of the mad tangle of presidential nominations. “He” had always been treated well there. “He” knew the VA was wonderful to all.
He did not realize the difference between a Senator walking into the VA like a star and receiving the best of the best, and a kid from Iowa creeping in still in last year’s fatigues and drug addled and saying he’s going to cut himself.
Two of the true things about the VA: there are excellent and devoted doctors and nurses there; many. And many of the alert and insightful doctors and nurses there are not always allowed to do their medical jobs, using their best compassionate and trained medical judgments regarding soldiers, non-coms especially, without being quashed and detoured for non-medical reasons over which they have little or no control.
But now this new and detailed research on ages of soldiers most likely to suffer from PTSD, which circumstance of deployment cause more PTSD than others, and what percentage of soldiers coming back from the current two wars the United States engages, will be affected by Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which incidentally… in many cases I think ought be called instead, “Post Traumatic Suicidal Despair.”
The link to the new PTSD study came to me from Shaun Mullen’s blog and can be found here, and at the same link too is an interview on PTSD with your Dr. E, who has been a post-trauma specialist for 38 years. Mullen’s choice of pictures, minus the one of Dr. E, are compelling choices, too. Double click on the images there to see them in a larger view.