Weakened Warriors?

Weakened Warriors?

by Chaplain Kathie

Iraq, Afghanistan VA Patients Exceed 400,000

Thursday 29 January 2009

by: Maya Schenwar, t r u t h o u t Report

As the number of veterans seeking health care continues to rise, the VA is straining to meet demands.

Amid talk of a drawdown of troops in Iraq, new statistics from the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Veterans' Affairs (VA) show that US casualties are still climbing quickly. Iraq and Afghanistan battlefield injuries and deaths number 81,361, up from 72,043 last January, according to data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by Veterans for Common Sense (VCS). Veteran patients - including those who didn't seek care until their return home - shot up to 400,304 (from 263,909 in December 2007).

For the thousands of soldiers flooding the VA, mental illness tops the list of ailments. Forty-five percent of VA patients have already been diagnosed with mental health conditions, including a startling 105,000 diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These data do not include the incalculable number of mentally ill veterans who have not received a diagnosis or haven't sought treatment at the VA.

Health care for veterans has improved substantially in the past year, mostly due to legislative changes and funding boosts, according to Raymond Kelley, legislative director of AMVETS. The recently passed Dignity for Wounded Warriors Act entitles veterans to up to five years of free health care for military-related medical conditions. Other legislative victories include improvements to VA facilities, increased mental health care research and a boost for the claims processing system, which has been vastly understaffed and overburdened throughout the "war on terror."

However, many barriers to adequate care and compensation remain, particularly for veterans filing for disability benefits. Delays and denials of those claims are routine. Among vets with PTSD, 59 percent have not been approved for benefits, meaning that their claims are pending or rejected - or that, due to any number of deterrents, they have not filed a claim.

According to Paul Sullivan, executive director of VCS, the average wait-time for veterans to receive an answer after filing for disability compensation is more than six months. A recent VCS lawsuit against VA showed that PTSD patients face even longer delays.

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Suicides are up again. The cases of PTSD are going up and up, which is not totally a bad thing because it means more are seeking help for PTSD. The bad part of all of this is that the DOD and the VA are still not able to take care of all of them. They keep saying they're doing more but over and over again we find their "more" is not even close to what needs to be done.

For years they've relied on a program called "BattleMind" that was designed to prepare the warriors for combat and then casually addressed the fact that they could be wounded by PTSD after they told them they needed to mentally prepare for combat. The problem is how they did this ended up telling them that if they were weak, their minds not toughened enough, it was basically their fault they ended up with PTSD. This was not the intention of the program but the message was received this way.

That is one of the problems. The fact they have yet to understand what causes PTSD in some and not in others has been another problem. They don't understand there are basically three different types of people. One may be more self-centered. I have yet to hear from a veteran that was self-centered before combat developing PTSD. Another is the middle type, a little self-centered and a little sensitive. Some of them can and do become wounded by PTSD if their exposures to traumatic events happens one too many times. The other group, they are more sensitive and compassionate types. They seem to be wounded the most and the deepest. Being sensitive has nothing to do with not being courageous. Often it's the other way around. They see someone in need and because of their compassion, they do things no one else would dare to do in order to help.

The other thing that needs to be pointed out is that when they are deployed into combat, they do what needs to be done out of that same courage. They know lives depend on them and they set themselves aside to live up to the challenge. They put their own pain aside thinking of others. It is not until the lives of others are out of danger they crash. Most will not acknowledge they need help until they are far from danger. It's one of the biggest reasons they do not commit suicide while in a fire fight or on duty. They do it when they are in their bunks or back home.

While the Army study showed the redeployments increase the risk of PTSD by 50%, the DOD and the VA failed to do anything about it. Units are redeployed over and over again. Then there are the National Guardsmen and Reservists, also redeployed and on top of the stress of going into combat, they have the added stresses of trying to come back to their "normal" lives into a nation that has been oblivious as to what was expected of them and the hardships they had to endure.

BattleMind made them feel as if they were "weakened warriors" unable to cope with what was asked of them. It was not their fault. It was total lack of knowledge of what makes them so different.

I'll never forget a Marine I met at the VA in Orlando. He was trying to fill out paperwork to begin a claim with the VA as he sought treatment. He saw the Chaplain shirt I had on and we began to talk. The Marine put his hand over his face so that I would not see the tears coming. He said he was ashamed. He said he was a Marine and trained to be tough. He was falling apart because no one told him that he did his duty and was able to do whatever was asked of him because of his courage and was sustained by the dedication he had to his brothers. He didn't understand how much courage that took. There he was wounded by PTSD yet he was able to go into battle, able to overcome his own pain until he was no longer needed and back home.

This is what BattleMind should have addressed so they would not feel as if they were weak and it was their fault. They returned home feeling as if they just couldn't cut it.

Then when they came home, they realized they could no longer stuff the pain in the back of their minds. They knew they needed help but when they went for it, either their commanders belittled them or help was not able to keep up with the need. No one was prepared and they still are not even close. The VA is not able to help all of them even though data was known and there is no excuse for the lack of preparedness except the fact the people in charge thought they could get away with turning veterans away, denying claims and breaking them to the point where they simply dropped their claims. This is not a new attitude. It's been going on for a long time. What is new is the total contradiction of actions taken.

On one hand the VA and the DOD are reaching out to raise the awareness of PTSD, but the other hand is doing very little to be able to deal with the influx of new disability claims and treatment programs.

The VA and the DOD will pat themselves on the back for their suicide prevention programs but they will not address the fact the suicides have gone up every year or the fact that they are even brought to that point when treatments are supposed to be available so that no one should ever feel so hopeless they even contemplate suicide.

If people look back at what happened to Vietnam veterans they would have known exactly what was going to happen, but they didn't. Over and over again, I read "new studies" being done that were done over 30 years ago. I keep hoping for something new but they are wasting time.

This only address the issue of PTSD but then you have to add in Traumatic Brain Injury, other illnesses caused by contaminated water, depleted uranium, white phosphorous, Agent Orange and the host of other factors contributing to Gulf War Syndrome. The suffering of our veterans goes on and on. When they file a claim for what they know was caused by their service to this nation lead to being denied treatment and compensation for their condition, it dishonors the service they gave to the nation.

It is time we got this right or stopped pretending we are a grateful nation to them. We failed them and will keep failing until we do all that is necessary to meet the challenges we have when they come home, when their duty is done and their own challenges have been met because they did their duty.

"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington