THE WAR BACK HOME: COMBAT'S 'INVISIBLE WOUNDS'

THE WAR BACK HOME: COMBAT'S 'INVISIBLE WOUNDS'
Las Vegas Review - Journal - Las Vegas,NV,USA


Veterans are returning to Nevada in need of help for mental problems

By ALAN MAIMON
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
This is the first in a four-part series.

TODAY: Veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan routinely overcome horrid wounds and loss of limb, but equally formidable foes are the mental effects of head injuries, constant or repeated exposure to danger and making decisions of awesome consequence.


NEXT SUNDAY: When an American dies in combat, the warrior's loss leaves a hole in American hearts.

More than 30 surgeries have helped fix what a roadside bomb in Iraq did to Senior Airman Brandon Byers' body, but nothing can erase the anger, paranoia and flashbacks that sometimes haunt his mind.

His physical recovery from the near-death experience in October 2006 has been difficult.

So has his fight to heal his mental wounds from the battlefield.

"There have been times since I've been back that I didn't want to walk down the street because I was afraid somebody was going to get me," said Byers, who lives with his wife and two children on Nellis Air Force Base. "But I'm not the only one having a hard time, a bad day, or every now and then, a mental breakdown."

Other Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans interviewed by the Review-Journal tell similar accounts of the realities of post-traumatic stress disorder, the psychological offshoot of a life-threatening or traumatic event.

A report earlier this year by the Rand Corp., a nonpartisan think tank, estimates that up to 300,000 recently returned veterans have PTSD or major depression. The report said that only about a quarter of veterans diagnosed with mental health conditions are getting minimally adequate care.

The symptoms of severe PTSD, including extreme anger, flashbacks to a traumatic event, hypervigilant behavior and sleeplessness, can be debilitating and deadly.

Joseph Perez, a Nevada National Guardsman injured during a prison riot in Iraq in 2003, said he became so distraught after his tour that he self-medicated with vodka and painkillers and twice attempted suicide.

"If it'll help somebody else, then I don't mind talking about it," said Perez, a husband and father of three daughters from Logandale, about 60 miles northeast of Las Vegas.

Nationally, nearly 84,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have been diagnosed with PTSD, said Dr. Antonette Zeiss, deputy chief of mental health services for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
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