PTSD is Real, PTSD Fraud is Not

I got into working with veterans because I fell in love with one of them, was raised by another (my Dad) and surrounded by them (my uncles) all my life including my father-in-law. He was a WWII veteran with a Purple Heart and Bronze Star. Nothing new for my husband's family. All four brothers were fighting in WWII. One, a Marine, was killed in action and another uncle, a merchant Marine never really recovered from being on a ship, hit by a Kamikaze pilot and ended up in the ocean. PTSD was just as real during WWII but no one talked about it. Very little was done for the survivors of combat. As a matter of fact despite the fact PTSD is as old as mankind, there was very little done until Vietnam veterans came home and fought for it.

When WWII veterans came home with "shell shock" they were either sent to the "nut house" or to farms. My husband's uncle ended up on a farm. Out of view and conscience of the public, these veterans were hidden away to live out their days. Korean veterans came home the same way. They were conditioned to be silent in their suffering. Like other generations of veterans, they were expected to just get over it, move on, go back to their lives before combat, while the general public simply assumed all was well and our veterans were taken care of.

The truth is we do a fantastic job sending them off to combat, find all the money needed to fund the combat they risk their lives carrying out, but then, well then we complain about the money needed to care for the wounded, the widow and orphans. Too often there are widows and orphans to care for because we didn't care for the wounded. 18 veterans a day commit suicide. Nothing really new there but most Americans don't have a clue. They don't know about the rise in suicides of active duty personnel either. They just don't want to know.

Maybe it's because we pride ourselves believing we really do support the troops and it's just too damn hard to discover we stop supporting them when they come home needing us after we needed them. I have more faith in us and really believe in my soul that if the general public knew a tenth of what these men and women have to endue when they come home, they would take to the streets and demand changes in every city and town. The passion of so many lining the streets when one of them returns home in a flag draped coffin, weeping for loss, indicates just how attached our hearts are to them. The media needs to inject reality into their minds so they understand sending men and women into combat is just the beginning of our obligation.

I live with PTSD in my home. I've seen the worst when help is not there and I've also seen healing when it is provided. Even with the healing, there are still parts of his life he can never reclaim, but we've learned to live with the unhealed. It's normal to us now. Over the years, I've watched too many suffer without seeking help. Read too many stories of men and women we would call hero one day, abandon the next, and bury the day after that. All of them make me remember my own life and I grieve for what was possible but unknown to the families.

Over the years I've also met people just as dedicated as I've been to our veterans. One of them is a hero to me and his name is Paul Sullivan, of Veterans for Common Sense. He knows what's going on, what is real, what is claimed and he has the passion to do something about it. When the AP report came out about frauds, Paul fought back. Here's what he had to say.

PTSD is Real, PTSD Fraud is Not
Written by VCS
Monday, 03 May 2010 15:46
May 3, 2010, Washington, DC (VCS) - Last weekend, the Associated Press printed an incomplete and inaccurate article about veterans who file disability claims against the Veterans Affairs Department (VA) for post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Without citing a source, AP wrote, “The problem: The [VA claims] system is dysfunctional, an open invitation to fraud. And the VA has proposed changes that could make deception even easier.”

AP is wrong, and VCS asked AP to correct the story.

Here are two very important facts AP overlooked. If AP had included these two facts, then readers would understand more about VA and veterans suffering with PTSD after deploying to the brutal Iraq and Afghanistan wars, sometimes two or three times.

Fact Number One

There is no widespread fraud problem at VA. Out of more than one million claims per year, less than a score are ever investigated for fraud.

Furthermore, in November 2005, VA auditors randomly selected 2,100 PTSD claims. After an exhaustive investigation, VA found zero cases of fraud. VA has extensive methods to prevent fraud, contrary to AP's baseless assertion. AP should have reported that fact.

VA’s investigation began when a reporter at the Chicago Sun Times observed that VA pays different average amounts in disability benefits based on a state-by-state comparison. The true culprit: poor leadership, staff shortages, and a lack of consistent training. VA Secretary Shinseki is taking bold steps to address these challenges, and he has broad support among veterans’ groups.
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PTSD is Real, PTSD Fraud is Not

Over the years scientists have used the latest technology to view what people like me have lived with. The reality of PTSD is no longer just something we say, but something that can be seen with machines. Changes in the brain can be seen with their eyes while we live with the daily struggle of trying to help them heal. It has also been a battle to fight against the uninformed and fearful. The fact is that veterans are very reluctant to seek approval of a claim or treatment because the diagnosis of PTSD is just too painful to hear. They would rather go on suffering waiting for their "get over it alive day" to just come on its own. A diagnosis of PTSD to them has been a sign of being weaker than their buddies. It has been a "career" killer for lifers never wanting to do anything other than serve in the military. It's taken over 30 years to get the message thru to them that as a human, they were wounded because of combat.

Genetic changes show up in people with PTSD
But it's unclear if alterations cause the disorder
By Nathan Seppa Web edition
Monday, May 3rd, 2010

People with post-traumatic stress disorder seem to accumulate an array of genetic changes different from those found in healthy people, researchers report online May 3 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The new findings, while showing differences between people with and without PTSD, don't shed light on whether these differences might play a role in PTSD, says study coauthor Sandro Galea, a physician and epidemiologist at Columbia University in New York City.

Only a fraction of people who witness a traumatic event develop PTSD. In an attempt to identify what makes people who develop PTSD biologically different from those who don’t, Galea and his colleagues obtained blood samples from 100 people in the Detroit area. All had been exposed to at least one potentially traumatic event, and 23 were diagnosed with PTSD. The scientists tested 14,000 genes in these blood samples for chemical changes to DNA that can affect gene activity without altering the genetic information itself.

The team found that the people with PTSD showed less methylation in several immune system genes and more methylation in genes linked to the growth of brain cells. “There is evidence that PTSD is involved in immune dysfunction, and we suggest that that’s part of a larger process,” Galea says. Although previous studies have also suggested a PTSD link to immune gene activation, the connection is unclear.

“This is interesting data, but there are a lot of things still to do,” says Manel Esteller, a molecular geneticist at the Bellvitge Institute for Biomedical Research in Spain and the University of Barcelona who was not part of the study. “What’s missing is an explanation of how the traumatic stress really causes these changes in methylation — what is the mechanistic link?”

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Genetic changes show up in people with PTSD

Even today there are many still holding on to false impressions of what PTSD is and what the missing link is. The missing link is the fact they are compassionate people, able to feel deeply. They confuse this with being weak instead of seeing it is required for them to be able to do what they do, go where they go and see what they see but manage to still get up, stand up and carry on. That compassion is required of all the courage in the world would be of little good. If they didn't care deeply in the first place, they wouldn't be wounded as a survivor. There are different levels of PTSD just as there are different types of PTSD. Some are caused by natural events but others are caused by man. The ones caused by man cut deeper. The ones when the person is also a participant in the traumatic event, cuts even deeper. This is why warriors are cut deeper than police officers and they are cut deeper than firefighters. It is the participation in the event itself as well as the number of times the events involve them.

So now we have to fight all over again because the uninformed, blame the veteran crowd, has something we've tried to eradicate for over 30 years. This article will undo all these years worth of work to convince the veterans Americans want to live up to their obligation to them and care of the wounded. I'm still wondering how many veterans on the verge of seeking help for PTSD will not seek it now. How many will suffer needlessly longer as we have to fight back on an irresponsible article on AP?

"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington