Post-Traumatic Stress Under-Treated: Local Soldiers Affected

Post-Traumatic Stress Under-Treated: Local Soldiers Affected
Target 11 Investigates Treatment Gaps
A recent study was highly critical of the care the soldiers are receiving when it comes to post-traumatic stress disorder.

Target 11 talked to a local soldier who said the military turned its back on him.

Robert Reeb spent the past 17 years in the military.

In the summer of 2006, he returned from Iraq and that's when his troubles began.

"I started using inhalants, and anything I could," said Reeb.

Diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, he was sent to Walter Reed Army Hospital in Maryland.

But halfway through, the treatment program was cut off -- Reeb was ordered back to Pennsylvania and discharged under honorable conditions.

A spokesman for the Pennsylvania National Guard said Reeb was given numerous chances, but repeated problems eventually led to his discharge. But a recent survey by the RAND corporation uncovered troubling statistics about the treatment soldiers returning from battle receive.

While some 300,000 soldiers suffer from PTSD, the study revealed only half who need it are getting treated and of those, slightly more than half received care labeled "minimally adequate".

Terri Tanielian conducted the study and said the military can do better.

"There are a number of opportunities that exist within the Department of Defense and the VA where there are tools and settings where you would hope and expect that higher quality care would be delivered," said Tanielian.

Congressman Jason Altmire agrees it's a big problem.

"It's a problem with the quality of care they are getting," said Altmire.

Altmire believes the situation facing Reeb and other soldiers is preventable.

"Certainly he did not get the treatment on the front end that he should have. And unfortunately he took a downward spiral and his life went in a different direction," said Altmire.
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