Help scarce for mental scars of war

Rebecca Walsh: Help scarce for mental scars of war
By Rebecca Walsh
Tribune Columnist
Article Last Updated: 08/21/2007 02:45:12 AM MDT

Veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom make easy icons for the culture wars. They're either sad victims or heroes of the never-ending "War on Terror."
But the ones who bring the war back home - the vets emotionally scarred by a tour of duty in the Middle East - are more ambiguous.
Walter Smith is one of those.
Last week, the 26-year-old former Marine admitted he drowned Nicole Speirs, his girlfriend and mother of his infant twins, in the bathtub of their Tooele home in March 2006.
Members of Smith's unit didn't want to believe it. But they could understand how it happened.
As a young man, Smith was thrown into the chaos of invasion as a member of Fox Company, a Marine Reserve unit from Utah and Nevada. He felt responsible for women and children caught in the crossfire. He was haunted by memories of opening fire on a car approaching a checkpoint in Iraq, killing the man inside, a noncombatant.
Smith was discharged "for medical issues" and started counseling for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In 2004, Pleasant Grove police found him loading a shotgun, intent on killing himself. He spent two days in a mental health facility before he was released and told "to find counseling." He did. It didn't help.

click post title for the rest