PTSD:Returning Home Homeless

Matt Renner: Returning Home Homeless
Friday, 22 February 2008, 2:14 pm
Article: Matt Renner



Returning Home Homeless

By Matt Renner
t r u t h o u t Report
Thursday 21 February 2008
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022108R.shtml


Former Hospital Corpsman Kevin Bartolata spent four years and eight months in the military. When he decided to leave, he found himself alone and with few options. He soon became hopeless and homeless, sleeping in a park in San Francisco. Through sheer persistence and help from veterans organizations, he was able to pull himself out of his desperate situation and find his way.

Around July 2004, Bartolata was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), an anxiety ailment common to military veterans that can manifest in different ways. Bartolata's condition resulted in insomnia and depression. However, the "military mentality" kept him from seeking treatment for nearly three years.

"It was like being labeled a shit bag in the military. If you went to the psychiatric ward, people said 'oh wow ... why couldn't I think of that? That would have gotten me out of work too.' It was viewed as a cop out."

Bartolata returned from Iraq in October 2004. After one month of leave, he was assigned to a medical surgical ward at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, California, a placement usually reserved for inexperienced corpsmen and those in training. Bartolata said the assignment felt like a "slap in the face," after his assignment in Iraq. He felt prepared for the responsibility of a leadership position where he could better share his experience and help train fellow corpsmen for deployment.

While he grew to value working with the Vietnam veterans he attended to at the facility, he was somewhat demoralized by the bad placement. "It was a step backwards. I didn't enjoy my time like I thought I would. I had clashes with the leadership." Bartolata began to look forward to leaving the Navy and rejoining the civilian world. He began moonlighting at a private hospital, working twelve-hour shifts on his days off from the naval hospital to save money and to prepare himself for his transition.

During his service, Bartolata earned enough money to put a down payment on a new Acura sports car. He had solid credit and his military paycheck covered the monthly payments.

He officially left the Navy on August 25, 2005. Six years after joining at the age of eighteen, Bartolata was excited about celebrating his upcoming twenty-fourth birthday with friends in Los Angeles. However, this celebration was tainted by the beginning of what would become a downward spiral.
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What is the new rule going to do for veterans like Bartolata? Yesterday I posted the story about Spc. Benjamin Stewart, who must have PTSD based on what he was going through. Stewart is going to spend six months locked up for not wanting to go back to Iraq. This is what he was told when he said he couldn't go back. He will receive a dishonorable discharge.

Lt. Col. Thomas Rickard told Stewart that: "Twenty years ago in Panama we would have stripped a soldier naked, beat him up, thrown him in a van and dumped him for not deploying."

The new rule of not having to prove a traumatic event happened, will not help him because the DOD did not diagnose him and sought to punish him instead. What will happen to him and what kind of justice is he getting?

More and more they go to risk their lives, have their minds traumatized in the process and then are abused by their commanders who still refuse to acknowledge PTSD is a wound. More and more they are treated like a "shit bag" because ignorance overrules facts. Shouldn't it matter that these men and women were willing to serve the nation, lay down their lives for the nation, served the nation and then were wounded for doing it?

I take great pleasure in posting the advances the DOD and the VA are making but stories like these prove they both have a lot more work ahead of them. The people of this nation cannot abandon them thinking all is well because it isn't. If we don't keep the pressure on the Congress to take action and enforce the rules of conduct, more will end up homeless, hopeless and more will take their own lives.