PTSD counting depends on who does the counting

Problem with this and it aggravates the hell out of me. First, the New York Times did not "report" it. This came from an op-ed. You can read the rest of this by clicking on the below link.

The Walking Wounded: PTSD Victims
January 26, 2009 - 09:45 AM

.....What is not know is how many of our troops are affected by PTSD. The Army conducted a survey in 2006 and concluded that 17% of soldiers and marines surveyed suffered from PTSD. A Rand study put the number at 14%. The New York Times reports today on a new mathematical model by Lawrence W. Wein, et al. which estimates that "about 35% of soldiers and marines who deploy to Iraq will ultimately suffer PTSD -about 300,000 people, with 20,000 new sufferers for each year the war lasts." This is a staggering number.

This is what was in the New York Times

Op-Ed Contributor

Counting the Walking Wounded
By LAWRENCE M. WEIN
Published: January 25, 2009
Stanford, Calif.

THE American troops in Iraq daily face the risk of death or injury — to themselves or their fellow soldiers — by homemade bombs and suicide attackers. So it is not surprising that post-traumatic stress disorder is a common problem among returning soldiers. But how many, exactly, are affected?

This question is key to determining how large an investment the Department of Veterans Affairs needs to make in diagnosing and treating the problem. The United States Army’s Mental Health Advisory Team, which conducted a survey of more than 1,000 soldiers and marines in September 2006, found that 17 percent suffered from P.T.S.D. Similarly, a Rand study put the number at 14 percent.

But these estimates do not take into account the many soldiers who will eventually suffer from P.T.S.D., because there is a lag between the time someone experiences trauma and the time he or she reports symptoms of post-traumatic stress. This can range from days to many years, and it is typically much longer while people are still in the military.

To get a better estimate of the rate of P.T.S.D. among Iraq war veterans, two graduate students, Michael Atkinson and Adam Guetz, and I constructed a mathematical model in which soldiers incur a random amount of stress during each month of deployment (based on monthly American casualty data), develop P.T.S.D. if their cumulative stress exceeds a certain threshold, and also develop symptoms of the disorder after an additional amount of time. We found that about 35 percent of soldiers and marines who deploy to Iraq will ultimately suffer from P.T.S.D. — about 300,000 people, with 20,000 new sufferers for each year the war lasts. click link for more

The biggest problem I have with this is that people mean well but by just repeating numbers, they do more harm than good.

They are way off and most of the reports coming out are not even close to what reality is. The model for PTSD is one out of three. This is what most experts use, but some do use one out of five. Keep in mind this is for all causes of PTSD and not just from combat. For combat, especially when we're talking about redeployments, you need to add in the wild card of the warning from the Army research which stated clearly that the redeployments increase the risk of PTSD by 50%.

If these researchers really want to know what reality is they need to know why some develop PTSD and others do not. It's as simple and complex as humans are. There are basically three different types of people. Self-fish/self-centered, usually more focused on their own needs and desires. Then there are the middle of the road types that do care about others but have a balance between their own self-interests and the interests of others. It's the third category, the more compassionate, caring, empathetic types wounded by PTSD. Scientists, well they would never listen to someone like me. All I've been doing over the last 26 years is living with one, researching and talking to the others and most of the time talking them off the ledge they are on so they don't commit suicide. The most common thing I've found is all of the veterans I've talked to or emailed with over the years, they've all been very caring individuals. Even if you read the stories when the families of veterans that committed suicide, you'll find the words describing this type of person.

The next thing I found is that the majority of them believe God either abandoned them or judged them and they are suffering because of what they had to do, or because of what they saw in combat.

If researchers and scientists keep asking the same questions, they will get the same answers and they will never be able to know what causes PTSD in certain people but not others.

OK, back to this post. I decided to skip what the New York Times had because the numbers are good but not right and it was an op-ed. The thing that caused me to post on it was the first article from a law firm. Again wrong, but this one said the New York Times "reported" it as if it was gospel.

All you have to do is look at the data after Vietnam to know exactly where we are and where we are headed. They are holding off a tsunami with a beach shovel! By 1978 the DAV study had PTSD Vietnam veterans at 500,000 with the added prediction that the numbers would rise over the following ten years. It did but they went up far beyond the 80's and 90's. They are still going up in the Vietnam Vets numbers along with Korea, Gulf War and Afghanistan and Iraq. The op-ed also omitted the Army's warning that redeployments increase the risk of PTSD by 50%. Redeployment into Vietnam was not so common. It was usually one year and one tour and we ended up with staggering numbers. We also lost a lot more lives. The wounded living with catastrophic wounds today will lead to more cases of PTSD needing to be taken care of.

One more thing is that the numbers of Vietnam veterans that committed suicide went off the charts. By 1986 it was 117,000 but two later studies put the number between 150,000 and 200,000. Most of them along with most of the homeless population of veterans were never diagnosed, thus, never counted.

Today we have over 800,000 claims tied up in the backlog. None of them are counted if the claim is for PTSD because the claim has not been approved yet. There are over 300,000 cases on appeal and again, they are not counted because the claim has not been approved. This does not even address the numbers of claims the DOD has. Aside from the over 22,000 dishonorable discharges they pulled off under "personality disorder" there are many more they are not diagnosing and even more that do not seek to be treated at all because of the twisted logic most commanders still have when it comes to PTSD. This is not even coming close to addressing the TBI wounded, which most end up with both PTSD and TBI.

When it comes to numbers people use, I wish for once they would make sure what they are talking about. I try to post most of the reports so that my readers know the numbers are going up but my patience is limited. The erroneous reports and redone studies are doing more harm than good because people tend to think the worst has come when in truth, this is just the beginning. The Vietnam War did not stop killing as of the date on the Memorial of 1975. It's still killing but no one kept counting.