Eric Hall's story, so much more than missing Marine

Home from war, but no peace
By Kate Spinner
Published Saturday, Feb. 16, 2008 at 4:30 a.m.

Almost three years after an explosion ripped apart his leg and killed his best friend in Fallujah, Iraq, war still stirred in Eric Hall's mind.

He tried to ignore it, tried to hold down a steady job and tried to act like nothing was wrong. But family members say a flashback to the terror of combat sent the 24-year-old former Marine fleeing from his aunt's Deep Creek home on Feb. 3.

He has not been seen since, despite a feverish search in Charlotte County by rescue crews last weekend and dozens of volunteers this week.

Veterans advocates say Hall's disappearance is a sad example of the nation's failure to meet the needs of soldiers returning from battle in Iraq and Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder, also known as PTSD.

The Department of Veterans Affairs vastly underestimated the number of PTSD patients the war would generate, according to a January report by the advocacy group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

The VA predicted 3,000 new cases in 2005. Instead, it saw 18,000, according to the new study.

The fallout: an alarming increase in veterans who have committed suicide, become homeless or disappeared.

For Hall, getting treatment for PTSD in his hometown of Jeffersonville, Ind., meant days off work, long waits and little benefit in return.

"In his heart, he didn't feel like anyone understood," said his mother, Becky Hall, who is staying with family in Deep Creek to coordinate the search for her son, who had recently relocated to Southwest Florida.

Military studies report that one-third of veterans from the current wars will return home with some sort of mental illness.

Advocates estimate that 1.5 million soldiers will fight in those wars, eventually bringing the total number of veterans in need of mental health care to 500,000.
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I keep searching for more news on Eric Hall, the missing Marine, praying that he is found and get the help he needs. There is a chance that can happen. There is a chance he joined the other 20,000 homeless veterans in Florida. There is also a chance, he may have vanished.

Re-reading this report, it is amazing how much more information is in this reporting than just a story of yet one more combat veteran suffering from PTSD and the lack of care he needed.

While some advocates are putting the figure at 500,000 veterans with PTSD from Iraq and Afghanistan joining the other combat veterans from past wars, they are not even close. 1.6 million Vietnam veterans were in what was considered heavy combat zones. There have been 1.6 million rotated in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan already. By 1978 there were 500,000 diagnosed cases of PTSD according to a study commissioned by the DAV. This is just the beginning of the numbers we will be looking at.

Advocates who have been looking at all the numbers, like me, are thinking more in the range of at least 800,000 if both occupations ended today. That's right. We have evidence to back it up.

PTSD strikes 1 out of 3, no matter what the cause. But this figure is for every traumatic event. While the depth of the wound may vary, it is a human that is struck by it. Humans are still humans even if they are trained to go to war. Taking this figure as a basis, we have to then include the fact the redeployments increase the risk of PTSD by 50% for each time back in. Vietnam didn't have very many repeat tours. Most went for one year and then that was it. These troops are going back for up to 6 or even a few cases 7th time.

While we look at the numbers from Vietnam, beginning with the 500,000, then adding in the 148,000 who sought help from 2006-2007 in an 18 month period, we're already at 648,000. Then add in the numbers who were diagnosed from the time the study was done until now. We also have to take into account how many took their own lives. Two studies attempted to do this and put the figure between 150,000 and 200,000. 300,000 ended up homeless. It's easy to see how we already surpassed that rate, but also add in the fact that with the advancement of medical trauma care, the survival rate is also a lot higher than during Vietnam. This will also add to the PTSD rates when more survive.