PTSD veterans wait while research repeated

This isn't news. It's just a reminder. The problem is, when it was real news, few paid attention to it. I am really angry these "reports" and "research" keep getting attention they do not deserve. Just go back and look at what we knew and when we knew it to understand once and for all, this is not about healing them or taking care of them. It's about making money off their suffering! Give me a new study! Give me something that is new "news" and not something I've read in the 80's! When will this be really about them and not funding what was already done? Unless the design of the human body, mind and spirit has changed, since the original design, there really isn't any point in redoing any of this.

Iraq Troops' PTSD Rate As High As 35 Percent, Analysis Finds

ScienceDaily (Sep. 15, 2009) — The Veterans’ Administration should expect a high volume of Iraq veterans seeking treatment of post traumatic stress disorder, with researchers anticipating that the rate among armed forces will be as high as 35%, according to the Management Insights feature in the current issue of Management Science, the flagship journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®).


"Management Insights," a regular feature of the journal, is a digest of important research in business, management, operations research, and management science. It appears in every issue of Management Science.

The article “A Dynamic Model for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Among U.S. Troops in Operation Iraqi Freedom” is by Michael P. Atkinson of the Naval Postgraduate School and Adam Guetz and Lawrence M. Wein of Stanford University.
read more here
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090914151629.htm

This is not a quote from the article above.

"At least 30 percent of Iraq or Afghanistan [veterans] are diagnosed with PTSD, up from 16 percent to 18 percent in 2004," said Charlie Kennedy, PTSD program director and lead psychologist at the Stratton VA Medical Center. The number of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans getting treatment for PTSD at VA hospitals and counseling centers increased 87 percent from September 2005 to June 2006, and they have a backlog of 400,000 cases, including veterans from previous wars. The most conservative estimates project

that roughly 250,000 Iraq War veterans will struggle with PTSD.4

It came out two years ago.

A Perfect Storm: PTSD
Stacy Bannerman March 12, 2007

Editor: Erik Leaver, IPS

Foreign Policy In Focus

They fly the flag when you attack; when you come home they turn their back."
(Iraq Veterans Against the War cadence)
The sole aspect of the Iraq War upon which Americans are united is the need to provide post-deployment mental health care for our soldiers. The good news is that no one wants to abandon the veterans coming back from Iraq as happened with far too many of the veterans of Vietnam. The bad news is that we already have. Nowhere is that more apparent than within the National Guard and Reserves, who typically go from combat to cul-de-sac in forty-eight hours.

Active-duty troops are required to participate in post-combat mental health care sessions for the first three months of their re-entry, but the Department of Defense has a 90-day “hands-off” policy pertaining to National Guard and Reservists. After serving some of the longest tours in Iraq, they undergo a few days of out-processing, which includes a brief mental health screening. Desperate to get home, Guard and Reservists will say anything that will enable them to leave. When they are released--without support or services --they scatter across states, and generally don’t report at their first post-deployment training drill for three months or more.

The separation from other soldiers creates a feeling of isolation at a time when support and connection with others who are going through the same emotional adjustments is critical.

Like most National Guard soldiers, my husband didn’t receive a comprehensive mental health evaluation until eight months after he returned from a year-long tour at the most-attacked base in Iraq. Nearly a year after his exam, in August of 2006, he was notified of the outcome: Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) provides free health care services to veterans for a period of two years beginning on the date of their separation from active military service. By the time my husband was informed of his diagnosis and advised to get treatment, he had approximately six months remaining to access care. But the waiting list is long, and time is running out for him and for tens of thousands just like him.
read more here
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4056