Treating the trauma of war – fairly
In relabeling cases of PTSD as 'personality disorder,' the US military avoids paying for treatment.
By Judith Schwartz
from the August 20, 2007 edition
Bennington, Vt. - The high incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among soldiers returning from Iraq is one of the many "inconvenient truths" of this war. Inconvenient largely because it is costly: The most effective and humane means of treating PTSD are time-intensive and long-term.
The military, however, has changed the terms and given many thousands of enlisted men and women a new diagnosis: "personality disorder." While the government would be obliged to care for veterans suffering from combat-related trauma, a personality disorder – defined as an ingrained, maladaptive way of orienting oneself to the world – predates a soldier's tour of duty (read: preexisting condition). This absolves Uncle Sam of any responsibility for the person's mental suffering.
The new diagnostic label sends the message: This suffering is your fault, not a result of the war. On one level, it's hard not to see this as another example of the government falling short on its care for Iraq war veterans. Yet there's another, more insidious, bit of sophistry at work. The implication is that a healthy person would be resistant to the psychological pressures of war. Someone who succumbs to the flashbacks, panic, and anger that haunt many former soldiers must have something inherently wrong with him. It's the psychological side of warrior macho: If you're tough, you can take it. Of course, we know this is not true. Wars forever change the lives of those who fight them and can leave deep scars.
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This is just sneaky in the extreme. Not only are they appearing to make it the fault of those who suffer from it, but they are, in effect, saying that it cannot respond to treatment, especially if the subject is unwilling to change!
ReplyDeleteThere's a very sly, very wicked mechanism being employed here. It ranks up there with Reagan trying to get ketchup declared a vegetable.
If they claim it was "non-service connected" they are off the hook for the rest of the veteran's life. In the process, they destroy the veteran's future by slapping the label onto their record.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was bad enough when my husband was diagnosed but couldn't get the stamp of "service connected" for a long time. We were charged for his treatment. Health Insurance said they wouldn't cover it because the VA doctor said it was because of Vietnam. The VA took our tax return. It took six years of fighting them before he got the disability rating. They paid us back most of what they took but the whole thing almost finished us off. This just keeps getting worse.