Obama Administration Struggling to Tackle Mental Health Crisis

Obama Administration Struggling to Tackle Mental Health Crisis Plaguing Military
Tuesday 01 December 2009

by: Jason Leopold and Mary Susan Littlepage, t r u t h o u t Investigative Report
In May 2008, during a campaign stop in Charleston, West Virginia, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama gave a passionate speech about the inadequate care war veterans had received, particularly those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, under the Bush administration's tenure in office.
Without identifying him by name, Obama cited the case of Grover Cleveland Chapman, a World War II veteran from Greenville, South Carolina, who had been repeatedly denied PTSD benefits by the Department of Veterans Affairs. After his final appeal for treatment was turned down in April 2008, Chapman took a cab to his local VA clinic, put a loaded Smith & Wesson revolver to his temple and pulled the trigger. He was 89 years old.
"How can we let this happen? How is that acceptable in the United States of America? The answer is, it's not. It's an outrage," Obama said at the time. "And it's a betrayal - a betrayal - of the ideals that we ask our troops to risk their lives for. ...
"We have to understand that for far too many troops and their families, the war doesn't end when they come home. Just the other day our own government's top psychiatric researcher said that because of inadequate mental health care, the number of suicides among veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan may actually exceed the number of combat deaths. Think about that. Think about how only half of the returning soldiers with PTSD receive the treatment they need. Think of how many we turn away - of how many we let fall through the cracks. We have to do better than this."
Although Obama has taken steps to overhaul the VA - he nominated retired Army Gen. Eric Shinseki as secretary of Veterans Affairs and Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq war veteran whose combat wounds cost her both of her legs, as assistant secretary of public and intergovernmental affairs - he still hasn't nominated an assistant and deputy assistant secretary of defense for health affairs to tackle some of the lingering mental health issues plaguing the military.
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