The elusiveness of PTSD diagnoses argues for more flexibility, not less.

Service issue: The elusiveness of PTSD diagnoses argues for more flexibility, not less.

If ex-Sgt. Frank Wheeler has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, his less-than-honorable discharge from the Army won’t make him better.

That’s one reason officials at Womack Army Medical Center should take another look at Wheeler’s case, outlined in an Oct. 26 news story by Observer reporter Michael N. Graff.

They might also usefully revisit the idea of ignoring diagnoses by off-post providers. If the hospital had Wheeler pegged right the first time, his troubles will continue or even worsen until the condition and the diagnosis catch up with him and Womack gets a shiner for its handling of a decorated war veteran.

Another reason is an e-mail in which the hospital’s ranking officer overturned the PTSD profile issued by a Womack behavioral health psychologist. That action came five days after Wheeler was arrested for a violent incident involving his wife.

Whether it was intended that way or not, the e-mail came across as boastful. The colonel who wrote it said a miscoded diagnosis enabled her to stop his transfer to the Warrior Transition Battalion, where he would have enjoyed “not working and being heralded as a War Hero.”
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