More Than 1200 East Timor Veterans Now Suffering PTSD

Thursday, December 20, 2007
More Than 1200 East Timor Veterans Now Suffering PTSD



He served in Afghanistan for just six weeks, but it was enough time to see things that would haunt Andrew Paljakka long after his tour of duty ended.

He told of having witnessed an atrocity with a civilian victim, and of having to listen to the sounds of a man he had shot slowly dying.

After Captain Paljakka, 27, returned to Australia last year, he began drinking heavily and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress and severe depression. In February he was admitted to a private hospital, but discharged himself.

On February 26 he was found hanging from a bootlace in a cupboard in a Kings Cross hotel room. He left a young widow.

In May, a former SAS trooper, Geffry Gregg, took his life in Perth. He was a signalman, and had been among the first SAS soldiers deployed to Afghanistan. He had been involved in a bungled mission in which 11 civilians died and many were injured in an attack by Australian troops.

Mr Gregg's family were angry that the Defence Department did not try to find out why he missed psychiatric appointments in the nine months before he killed himself. He had been suffering from post-traumatic stress, and they said he was frustrated at having to deal with three different agencies.

Attempted suicide
In August 2005, two years after being discharged from the navy after rising to the rank of lieutenant commander, David Buck, 53, a Timor veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress as a result of seeing machete-wielding mobs and hacked bodies, tried to get police to shoot him by staging a robbery at the Umina Bowling Club with a fake bomb. He hoped the police would kill him in the belief he was a terrorist.

go here for the rest
http://theorstrahyun.blogspot.com/2007/12/more-than-1200-east-timor-veterans-now.html

Do you still wonder why we have so many more?