Message to PTSD soldiers: Go away boy, you're bothering me.

It often seems as if we're really living in two different countries at times. Thousands of people are getting ready to honor the fallen for Memorial Day. Tributes to the men and women laying in their graves after giving all they had for this country are forming in every tiny town as well as huge city. Arlington Virginia is getting ready to be invaded by Rolling Thunder, the Nam Knights, Patriot Guard Riders, the list goes on. One more reminder of how good we are at honoring the dead but have a hard time taking care of the living.


It's as if they said to them: "We can't use you anymore so go away and stop bothering us."

First, trying to wash their hands after they were doing using these soldiers up, this also insults every American with any kind of mental health condition. Did they think of this when they started to try to claim "pre-existing" personality disorders instead of accepting responsibility for this wound as old as mankind? Nope! Glad to say this practice is not still going on, or at least, it was supposed to have ended a couple of years ago, but then again, we've all read claims made before that turn out to not be true.

This practice was not in all units but the issue is it was still allowed to happen. Now the VA is trying to make things right. The question the rest of us should be asking is what happened to these men and women at the military got it wrong? How many ended up homeless because they had PTSD but ended up with a discharge like this? How many committed crimes because they had no hope of justice? How many families fell apart? Will we ever know the true price the veterans paid for serving this country?

“Freedom for the few”
May 16, 2010 posted by Bob Higgins

“They told me I wasn’t a real soldier, that I was a piece of crap. All I wanted was to be treated for my injuries, now suddenly I’m not a soldier. I’m a prisoner, by my own people.” Chuck Luther, after he was discharged from the Army for having Pre-Existing Personality Disorder.

By Marcelle Rico
In order to be in the Army Luther had to pass the various medical and psychological examinations, so his condition couldn’t possibly be pre-existing. He was kept in an isolation chamber for one month, where he was treated worse than a prisoner, until he agreed to sign a pre-existing PD discharge. The Army’s officials found a way to get away with misdiagnosing him and he was denied treatment for his disabilities. The Army’s Chapter 5-13 says that any soldier with pre-existing PD should be discharged from the army with no medical benefits. This excuse is used to avoid paying medical treatment to soldiers who get wounded in battle. This is how the Army makes money out of their war heroes. The Army is using a technicality to deny benefits to service men that desperately need and deserve them. This must stop.

In addition to being discharged with no benefits, soldiers have to pay the Army a slice of their re-enlistment bonus. The Army has left thousands of veterans struggling to pay back the bonus, with no medical treatment, and fighting against Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In 2008 the Nation magazine reported that 22,000 soldiers had been discharged from the Army with PD. Dozens of those soldiers have been found to be wrongly diagnosed. This raises the question: how many more soldiers have been erroneously diagnosed for the Army’s convenience? Our country doesn’t realize how hard it is for veterans to go back to the lives they had, now that they have PTSD.

“I see the ugly,” Luther said in an interview with Truthout news website, “I see soldiers beating their wives and trying to kill themselves all the time, and most folks don’t want to look at this, including the military.” Soldiers diagnosed with Personality Disorder are ineligible to be treated by The Department of Veterans Affairs. Most of them have severe injuries and need immediate care, but they are not being treated because they did not receive a disability rating from the Army. The VA is aware of this problem and is doing its best to find veterans who are being misdiagnosed.

Due to the lack of public knowledge of this issue, proper measures have not been taken to end it. We need more transparency on this issue. The more it is talked about and the more people find out about it, the easier it will be for Barack Obama to make it a priority to end the chapter 5-13 discharges. The first step is to set regulations in the Department of Defense. The files should be reviewed by a trustworthy member of the government and any misdiagnosed soldiers should be found and given the proper medical care. The second step would be to create a bill that says the government can view the lists of medical examinations and that officials from an outside organization should be appointed in each military base to avoid any more misdiagnoses.

read more here

Freedom for the few