Mental wounds treatable, but most veterans don't complete care

Mental wounds treatable, but most veterans don't complete care
War » Study says main reason may be soldiers' own resistance to care.
By Matthew D. LaPlante

The Salt Lake Tribune

Updated: 03/24/2010 05:31:47 PM MDT

Ben Rollins was self-destructing. Every night, after work, he and a few fellow Marines would get together to polish off a 30-pack of beer and a fifth of hard liquor. On one night, heading home from a night of hard drinking at a California bar, he was pulled over and arrested for drunken driving.

On another night, when Rollins was awoken by a family member, he began screaming and scrambling for his gun.

All around him, Marines who had served alongside him in Iraq were taking their own lives. "One guy walked out into traffic on Interstate 5," Rollins, now living in Sandy, recalled. "Another guy hung himself in his room."

But Rollins still wasn't convinced that he needed help. "I'm fine," he told himself. "There's nothing wrong with me."

He wasn't fine. And he wasn't alone.

Veterans Affairs researchers say that many veterans who submit to weekly treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can reduce their symptoms to "sub-diagnostic" levels within a few short months. But fewer than one in 10 veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder completes a recommended regimen of treatments within four months -- and only about 30 percent complete the treatment regimen within one year of their diagnosis, according to a recent study in the Journal of Traumatic Stress .
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