Another soldier arrested for PTSD help while AWOL

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?

Soldier arrested at VA hospital for being AWOL

By Jeffrey McMurray - Associated Press Writer
Posted : Monday Nov 19, 2007 18:53:05 EST

LEXINGTON, Ky. — A Kentucky soldier facing his second tour of duty in Iraq said in a jailhouse interview Monday that he was seeking mental help at a veterans hospital when police showed up in the middle of the night to arrest him.

Justin Faulkner, 22, of Stanton, Ky., is accused of being absent without leave, even though he insists his superior officers at Fort Campbell knew about his mental problems but refused to provide adequate treatment.

Instead, he checked into a VA hospital Thursday in Lexington, and doctors there told him they wanted to keep him until Monday for observation. He wouldn’t make it that long as police showed up at the hospital shortly after 2 a.m. Saturday to take him to jail.

“It’s humiliating, degrading,” Faulkner said in an interview with The Associated Press Monday afternoon, just minutes before his release from the Fayette County Detention Center. “It’s made me lose respect for the military. To come and arrest me at the VA, it wasn’t like I was trying to hide, trying to run. I was getting help. I am being punished for getting help.”

Faulkner, who concluded a one-year tour of duty in Iraq in February 2006, was due to head back there Monday to join the rest of his unit. He was released from jail on the condition he report back to Fort Campbell Tuesday.

He said he would but insisted the Army would be “foolish” to send him back considering the post-traumatic symptoms he has been experiencing since realizing a few weeks ago that a return trip to Iraq was likely.

“I kept getting these flashbacks, these recurring scenes from when I was over there the first time,” Faulkner said. “I get these anxiety attacks at night, and sometimes during the day, I daze off. I can’t get it out of my head. It wasn’t until I was told I had to go back to Iraq, something just clicked in my head — it was like reliving your worst nightmare.”
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First they are told to keep quiet. Then they are told to get help. Then they are denied the help they need, given meds to help them sleep and calm their nerves. The DOD tells them that they already had the problems when they enlisted. Then the VA makes them wait to be seen, makes them wait for help, makes them wait for claims to be approved. What the hell is this government doing to them?

I've gotten to the point where I don't have a clue what the hell to tell them anymore.

I got an email from a vet who is facing being homeless because he has PTSD and is losing everything while his claim is tied up. I got an email from another vet telling me there is no help in the part of the country he lives in because the closets place is not only too far away, it doesn't have room for him.

Now they are getting arrested for going for treatment for wounds they wouldn't have if they did not serve this country? They are being sent back into combat with 70% PTSD? Veterans can't even work at 70%! Yet the military sees nothing wrong with sending them back over and over again WITH MACHINE GUNS AND BOMBS!kc