Mental wounds said to raise war casualties tenfold

Military Update: Mental wounds said to raise war casualties tenfold

By Tom Philpott

Rep. Bob Filner (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, charged Bush administration officials Wednesday with continuing to downplay the mental trauma and brain injuries suffered by veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Filner said an April RAND Corp. study, "Invisible Wounds of War -- Psychological and Cognitive Injuries, Their Consequences, and Services to Assist Recovery," justifies a tenfold jump in the U.S. casualty count versus the figure of 33,000 American dead and wounded used by the Pentagon.

RAND researchers extrapolated from a survey they conducted of 1,965 veterans to conclude that nearly 300,000 service members and veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan wars are suffering from post-traumatic stress or major depression. Filner told the pair of researchers, who had summarized their findings for his committee, that their work probably understates the problem.

"I personally think these are low estimates, just from my own studies," Filner said. "But if you take even the 300,000, (it's) 10 times the official casualty statistics from the Pentagon. Shouldn't this 300,000 be included?"
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As posted here way too many times,,,,take the numbers from Vietnam, toss in the 50% increase risk of PTSD for each re-deployment and you get a number no one is ready for. If you think there isn't enough room, staff, claims workers and mental health workers now, try doing it for over a million. This is not even including the older veterans the outreach work is finally reaching.