Shattered soldiers say there was no help when they needed it for PTSD

This is what the national media should be reporting on instead of filling time in with the easy things to report on. Every channel you turn to, they are all talking about the same story, the same rumor, the same trouble. This is something they can do something about, but they won't bother with it.

Santiago Cisneros never dreamed he'd have trouble adjusting to civilian life again.

"It took a while to realize I was dealing with PTSD because I didn't know what post-traumatic stress disorder was. I had no clue"

Army Combat Veteran Santiago Cisneros tried to kill himself just eight months after leaving Iraq.

"I fought a war back there in Iraq. I didn't know I was going to have to fight a war back here in the United States within myself," says Santiago.

Shattered soldiers say there was no help when they needed it
Shattered soldiers say there was no help when they needed it
"I probably need to get some help before I slit your throats while you're sleeping." That's what a now AWOL Fort Lewis soldier said he told his command staff before he tried to kill his sergeant in Iraq. Even after the alleged attack, the soldier said, the Army never got him any mental help.
By Liz Rocca

My job was to kick down doors."
His Army buddies called him "K-10." On the dusty streets of Iraq he had one goal: "Find insurgents and punish them. Period."

K-10 can't use his real name because now he's a fugitive - a deserter. With just three weeks left in the Army, K-10 went AWOL from the Fort Lewis Post when, he says, the flashbacks of battle became more than he could bear.

"I never had nightmares before I went to Iraq," says K-10.

Another soldier, who now goes by the fictitious name of Arthur Smith, says he was so tortured by terrifying nightmares he went AWOL from the National Guard.

"I would wake up shaking, I would wake up sweating," he says. "I would have dreams of being gunned down by other Army soldiers."

Army Combat Veteran Santiago Cisneros tried to kill himself just eight months after leaving Iraq.

"I fought a war back there in Iraq. I didn't know I was going to have to fight a war back here in the United States within myself," says Santiago.

All three men told the Problem Solvers they are shattered soldiers, diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and didn't get the help they needed from the military they served.