Norma Perez, there is no excuse for her to hide behind

June 6, VCS in the News:
Judge Orders VA into Court to Explain VA E-Mail Discouraging PTSD Diagnoses

Paul Elias


San Jose Mercury News / Associated Press

Jun 05, 2008

Judge to consider newly-surfaced e-mail in vet care trial

June 5, 2008, San Francisco, CA — A federal judge considering a lawsuit that alleges inadequate veterans medical care ordered government lawyers on Thursday to explain an e-mail by a Veterans Administration psychologist suggesting that counselors diagnose fewer post-traumatic stress disorder cases in soldiers.

The hearing ordered by U.S. District Court Judge Samuel Conti follows a two-week trial that ended last month. Veterans groups had sued the VA, saying it inadequately addressed a "rising tide" of mental health problems, especially post-traumatic stress disorder and suicides.

The plaintiffs asked Conti to reopen the case in light of the e-mail discovered after the trial ended.

The judge agreed, saying "the e-mail raises potentially serious questions that may warrant further attention." He ordered lawyers for both sides to appear in court Tuesday to discuss whether the e-mail has any bearing on the case.

The document in question is a March 20 memo written by Norma Perez, who helps coordinate a post-traumatic stress disorder clinical team in central Texas.

"Given that we are having more and more compensation-seeking veterans, I'd like to suggest that you refrain from giving a diagnosis of PTSD straight out," Perez wrote to VA counselors. "We really don't or have time to do the extensive testing that should be done to determine PTSD."

Perez told senators Wednesday at a Senate Veterans Affairs Committee hearing called to investigate the e-mail that her message was poorly written and she meant to remind counselors that they could initially diagnose patients with a less severe stress condition known as "adjustment disorder."

go here for more
http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/articleid/10312


I have posted about this before along with far too many other reports to indicated the few people in the VA with this kind of attitude are not only casting a dark, hideous image of truly caring people working for the VA, they have also cost lives. Shall I list them here? Too late, they've been listed for years on this blog, on my other blog and all over the net. Shall we re-read the stories from the families who lost husbands, sons, wives, daughters, mothers, fathers when their lives could have been saved? Again, not really necessary considering the reports have come out all over the nation from grieving families who trusted the Veterans Administration to live up to what they claim by taking care of our veterans. Will one more post about any of them do any good?

Will it do any good at all to people like Perez? Will it bring them back to life? Restore a family torn apart? Undo a parent's unspeakable grief of having to bury a child of their's they thought had returned from combat safely and put into trusting care of the VA? Will it replace a wife's heartache as she lays in bed at night clutching her husband's pillow as she had done so many nights before while he was deployed only to have to face the rest of her life without him because the VA let him die? While it stop a child's tears or blot out memories of the stranger who came home looking like their parent but acting like someone they know longer knew only to find they had to go to their grandparent's house for a few days because "something happened" to their Dad or their Mom, then faced with having to get dressed up to go and stand by a coffin in a cemetery with a neatly folded flag to hold in place of their parent?

No, for Norma Perez, there is no excuse for what she did. There is no excuse for misdiagnosing any veteran when their lives could have been saved with the proper care and some human kindness. There is no excuse to abandon them to whatever may come their way when they could have been saved.

I've been up against too many people like Perez who callously dismiss and deny the suffering of these men and women, so worthy of so much more. I've spent more than half my life trying to undo the stigma people like Perez perpetrated against our veterans to advance their career, get a bonus for cutting costs when they could have been saving lives. Her "poorly written" email was further damage to men and women serving this country who brought home a terror inside of them. That terror made them reach out for help and she took that away from them. She took it away by telling them they are not really as wounded as they were and did not require the help they really needed to begin to heal. It was a betrayal against them.

What she also managed to do was to put up a wall against other veterans who may have sought help if they found other veterans were treated with the care and consideration a truly grateful nation and really dedicated VA employee would have provided if she gave a shit!

These are men and women, humans, who risked their lives for this country! They were willing to die for this nation doing what this nation asked of them. By the Grace of God they made it home only to find the enemy was not back where they thought they left them, but right here in their own country, in their own state in their own government! What Perez manage to tell them was that they were not worthy of the disability compensation that truly reflected their wound and they were turned away from the help they needed to treat their wound properly.

Whatever qualified her for the position she obtained in the VA should have come with the requirement she first prove she was a grateful citizen and dedicated to the veterans before she was even hired!