Alpha Company hit hard by post-traumatic stress

Both MacDermid and Katz said that PTSD had become a popular shorthand for all sorts of emotional symptoms that veterans experience. These may include depression and anxiety disorders, but not rise to the level of PTSD.

Steven Silver, who recently retired as director of the inpatient PTSD unit at the Coatesville VA hospital, predicted that as time went on, more and more combat veterans would be shown to have the high PTSD rate Alpha now shows.

Posted on Sun, Mar. 9, 2008


Alpha Company: Their War Comes Home
Alpha Company hit hard by post-traumatic stress
In all, 46 percent said they had been treated at clinics or hospitals. “Those are big numbers,” one expert said.
By Tom Infield

INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

Of all the things that Alpha Company has had to struggle with since it came home from Iraq, the most pervasive may be post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.
Of the 126 veterans interviewed or surveyed by The Inquirer, almost half - 46 percent - said they had been treated for PTSD, most at VA hospitals and clinics in the region.

Alpha's rate of PTSD is higher than that of most U.S. troops who served in Iraq or Afghanistan - partly, no doubt, as a result of its being a frontline combat unit that lost six men.

Shelley M. MacDermid, a Purdue University professor who served on a Defense Department mental-health task force last year, said typical PTSD rates among returning veterans were about 14 percent.

"Those are big numbers," she said of The Inquirer's Alpha findings.

National Guard and Reserve units, in general, have shown slightly higher PTSD rates than have regular Army units, she said.

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