Florida vets with PTSD need boosted grass-roots response

Post-traumatic stress disorder takes a 'village'
Florida vets with PTSD need boosted grass-roots response.


In a long overdue move, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs officials took shears to the red tape that tangled up veterans pursuing disability benefits for post-traumatic stress disorder.

Noncombat veterans who served in war zones no longer need produce backing documents or buddies to vouch for a specific event that triggered their PTSD. Now, it's presumed that a combat-zone veteran's claim of PTSD is service-connected.

Certainly, the VA would have made an even bigger splash had it also lightened the load of its understaffed ranks of mental-health professionals by blessing PTSD diagnoses from private-sector therapists.

Still, relaxing the claims process is progress. Progress that VA Secretary Eric Shinseki insists "goes a long way to ensure that veterans receive the benefits and services they need."

If only that were wholly true. While nearly 20 percent of troops in our two current wars struggle with PTSD, fewer than half ever seek treatment, according to a 2008 RAND Corp. study. The lingering stigma attached to mental-health counseling is partly to blame. But so is the VA's struggle to trot out trained counselors fast enough to keep pace with the mounting need.

In a recent assessment, U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command researchers (using a strict definition of PTSD) found symptoms severe enough to cause "serious functional impairment" in 10 percent of Iraq War veterans. A disturbing figure, considering more than 1 million U.S. troops have served in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11.

With Florida already home to America's third-largest veteran population — and growing — more citizens must enlist in the state's grass-roots army of helpers that stand ready to help vets battle PTSD.

Fortunately, grass-roots groups like Give an Hour have begun filling Florida's gaps. The nonprofit recruits mental-health therapists around the country who donate an hour of counseling to veterans.

"Unfortunately, the tremendous number of people affected makes it impossible for the military alone to respond adequately to the mental-health needs in its greater community," says psychologist Barbara Van Dahlen, founder and president of Give an Hour.
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Florida vets with PTSD need boosted grass-roots response


UPDATE
Reading the Sentinel there was a comment in the Letters to the Editor section with the title "Veteran doubts PTSD is authentic disorder." It makes me want to scream every time I hear someone make such a claim. It is not that they don't understand but more a case of they just don't want to know. That's the biggest problem with people having the ability to learn but refusing to do it. It's a lot easier to just say something isn't real than to invest some time in learning what the truth is.

I've been tracking this since 1982. PTSD is as real as it gets and there is a reason for it. You could have three people in the same exact place at the same exact time and find all three have different things going through their minds. One will thank God it wasn't them and walk away soon afterward forgetting all about the feelings felt in that one moment of trauma. Another will be more touched by it finding it harder to just get over, but eventually, the feelings are gone and life goes on. For the other, they take it all in, more than just a passing moment for them but it is the life changing moment when all they felt, all they believed in, all they trusted was obliterated. They walk away with the emotions they felt for themselves and the pain they felt for the other people in that traumatic event. They are not weaker than the others but their emotions are stronger, able to feel things more deeply, sensitive, caring, compassionate, beyond what the others are able to feel.

When you hear a veteran denying the reality of PTSD, it is also because they have not heard enough about it. The numbers are staggering right now because of the fact the Army released a study years ago about the increased risk of PTSD being raised by 50% for each time they are sent back. Many of our veterans have been sent back 3-4-5 times increasing their risk more and more. The other factor is the general public is more aware of PTSD, so fewer suffer in silence and there are more reports than every before. It's not that the troops have grown weaker, but communication has grown stronger. We know about more of them than we did during all other wars this nation has fought.

If you watched Ken Burns, The War, you would have heard WWII veterans talking about their own wound we now call PTSD, but for them it was "shell shock" and there was little help for them with even less information. This is a big reason why people are astounded by the reported numbers. It's no longer a secret veterans felt they needed to keep secret and now they know there is nothing to be ashamed of. It has more to do with the fact their character was so strong they could not walk away and just get over it.