Diplomats honor Rachel Schneller who fought for PTSD treatment

June 19th, 2008
Diplomats honor colleague who fought for PTSD treatment
Posted: 07:21 PM ET
From CNN’s Charley Keyes

WASHINGTON (CNN) — U.S. diplomats Thursday honored one of their colleagues for demanding acceptance and treatment for the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) she developed during her service in Iraq.

Rachel Schneller received a Constructive Dissent Award from the American Foreign Service Association. She was praised for “her professional courage and integrity in speaking out publicly on the sensitive issue of the occurrence of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder incurred by many Foreign Service employees returning from a tour in Iraq.”

An estimated 17 percent of people who serve as diplomats in Iraq and Afghanistan develop stress-related illnesses, according to a State Department survey conducted last year.

http://cnnwire.blogs.cnn.com/2008/06/19/
diplomats-honor-colleague-who-fought-for-ptsd-treatment/


After deaths in Iraq, diplomat says she feels 'all the work I did is worthless'

By Barbara Slavin, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Dark circles rim Rachel Schneller's eyes, an indication of the trouble she's had sleeping in the 10 months since she left Iraq.
Schneller's tour in 2005-2006 as a U.S. diplomat working with the provincial government in the southern Iraqi city of Basra was marked by tragedy and loss. An Iraqi employee she worked with was murdered in June on the way home from work. An American contractor friend was killed in September when a rocket pierced his trailer. More recently, an Iraqi prosecutor chosen by Schneller to visit the State Department for training this summer was murdered.

Since then, the diplomat says, she's had recurring memories of a nightmare in which she hanged herself from a lighting fixture in her office. "I had a deep sense that Iraqis are getting killed because of me," says Schneller, 33, an economics officer at the State Department in Washington. "All the work I did is worthless."

The war has placed deep strains on many of the 56,000 people who work around the world for the State Department. Some diplomats such as Schneller return home from the war with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Others say resources are being drained from posts elsewhere to cover the growing costs in Iraq.

"Without immediate increases of new recruits and money, Iraq could be doing long-term damage" to the State Department, says Robert Pearson, who was director general from 2003 to 2006 of the Foreign Service, the department's corps of professional diplomats.

State Department employees have been reluctant to complain, Pearson says, because of a culture that emphasizes stoicism, concern about losing security clearances if they seek counseling and fears that they will be considered disloyal.

go here for more of this
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-05-01-iraq-diplomat_N.htm



White House Downplays State Dept. Opposition to Iraq Posts
The Bush administration is working to defuse a public relations fiasco over news U.S. diplomats are refusing mandatory job assignments in Iraq. On Wednesday, hundreds of foreign service officers denounced the plans at a town-hall meeting in Washington. Video of the meeting was released on Thursday. State Department official

Rachel Schneller complained she was denied coverage for medical treatment after she returned from Iraq with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Rachel Schneller: “I came back (from Iraq) and was diagnosed almost immediately with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and I’ve been receiving treatment for that ever since, and I think that it’s just one of those things. I mean, the more people that serve in war zones, the more people will come back with those sorts of war wounds, it’s just going to happen, it’s just one of those things. And I actually don’t regret getting treatment for it, it was just one of those things I had to do, but I have to say that absolutely none of the treatment I received for it came from the State Department.”

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/11/2/headlines

This is a tribute to courage. It takes a lot of courage to stand up in front of people and say you need help because you are just a human exposed to events so traumatic you are changed. Courage is what you are willing to do. Courage is doing it. Courage is coming out of it after. Courage is taking the next breath. It's standing up and moving one foot after another. It does not mean that you do it all the same way you did it before the event. It's doing it while your heart is still pounding so strongly your shirt vibrates with every beat. It's doing it when you feel your nerves crash inside of you playing a sick game of bumper cars until you are ready to bounce off the wall. It's doing more wondering what to do next when you can't remember what you did first. It is saying the words out of your own mouth explaining to people you are not the same and you need help, knowing that if they said it to you, you would stand there judging them. You tell them just the same knowing they may never look at you the same way they did before, think you were less than you were before, talk to you less than they did before, but you do it all the same because that part inside of you, that part that made you do what you did, go where you went, is still there and still getting you to move from here to there one step at a time.

Anyone who admits they have PTSD, a wound they did not create but trauma did, they are all courageous. Because of them, more wounded will speak out and seek help for being a human wounded by events.