How many times do we have to read about veterans healing with the right treatment? How many times do we have to read about veterans not getting the help they need and taking their own lives? How many times do we have to read everything Satel avoids mentioning in her "expert" attacks against veterans?
For the last 29 years of my life, I've had one agenda, defeating PTSD. It has been hard as hell to get our veterans to seek help for what combat did to them. While the ravages of PTSD have been documented going all the way back to the Old Testament, there have been people just like Satel supporting the notion that a firing squad thins the ranks of malingers. She avoids the fact that Medal of Honor heroes and POWs from every war have suffered for their service and no amount of money ever eased their pain. Never once mentioning the fact that compensation from the DOD or the VA does not come close to what most of them make with a paycheck, the fact that income is fixed to the percentage of the disability they are given, which is usually much lower than their disability merits or the fact they have to live with no income until their claim is finally approved months or years after PTSD took hold.
Satel does not mention the studies published about the percentage of veterans not seeking help for PTSD.
The study found that only about a third of the veterans who appeared in need of health care for their PTSD or other mental health issues had actually received it in the previous year, meaning two-thirds of veterans in that area are going untreated.Can she explain this one away?
Asked why they are not seeking help, many of the 913 veterans surveyed, all of whom had been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan at least once, mentioned the stigma of PTSD, which has persisted despite efforts by all branches of the military to move past it. Some veterans in the survey felt that seeking treatment could have a negative impact on their careers and some also raised concerns about the side effects of psychiatric medications given to treat PTSD.
That is the problem with people like Satel saying whatever she wants to support her agenda of harming veterans instead of getting them the help they need to heal. She has been cyanide to every effort made in the last 40 years to get them to seek help.
After Garcia got home from a year in Vietnam in 1970, he had a hard time adjusting, he said.
"It was definitely a transition for me," he said. "I went over there 18 and came back feeling 40. My world had changed, and it took me a while to catch up with it," he said. "My family expected me to be the same kid I was. I felt like they had changed, and they felt like I had changed."
Garcia went through a rough adjustment time, and although he initially tried to connect with the VA system right when he returned, he got frustrated with long waits and shied away. It would be 30 years before he got linked with the VA through a veteran-service officer.
This is from this great article about our veterans and what they face.
Healing wars scars: New VA rules help local veterans with PTSD find relief Kate Nash | The New Mexican
Posted: Wednesday, June 01, 2011
Sally L. Satel, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, is co-author of “The Health Disparities Myth: Diagnosing the Treatment Gap.”
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
The Wrong Way to Help Veterans
By SALLY L. SATEL
Published: August 19, 2011
IF all goes according to plan, by the end of the year, 10,000 American soldiers in Afghanistan will be home with their families — and their memories. As many as 20 percent of them will suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety or depression, while suicide rates have reached tragic new highs among veterans. In response, the Department of Veterans Affairs has greatly expanded its mental health services and made veterans well aware that disability benefits are available.
It seems only logical that a veteran who thinks he has a long-lasting impairment as a result of military service would file a disability claim. The problem is that the system allows him to receive these benefits for a condition without ever having been properly treated for it. As a result, a system intended to speed up entitlements for veterans could end up hurting them.
Currently, for a disability determination, Veterans Affairs requires the claimant to go through a psychiatric exam, also known as a “comp and pension.” But the session typically lasts just 90 minutes and does not provide enough information for an examiner to make a firm decision about a veteran’s future function — that is, whether he or she will continue to be sick in a way that impairs the ability to work, and thus require compensation.
read more here if you can stand it
Dr. Satel is neither a charlatan nor a political mouthpiece. While I do not agree with all of her assertions, as a psychologist/retired military/deployed twice and now as VA examiner, I do find some valid arguments. I can only point to the Australian system which does service connect for PTSD but with several important differences. A major portion of funding goes into occupational/vocational training and treatment for symptoms with the reduction and elimination of "compensation payments" after 5 years for most Australian Veterans suffering from PTSD.
ReplyDeleteEveryone has a story (and most are likely true) about a deeply suffering veteran that has been neglected by the system, I have heard many as an examiner and I have striven to correct these situations. However, there is also a significant minority (anecdotally, 20-25%) of veterans that "suddenly" develop PTSD symptoms after long histories of effective employment and coping (let us not forget that the C & P system was originally designed to assist with impaired occupational abilities) at just about the time that they are retiring from successful (or not-so successful) civilian careers. In addition, as an examiner I have seen many veterans asking me "why they are here" denying significant symptoms and sent to the VA due to overzealous service organization representatives. I am convinced that the majority of claims that I have seem are legit, but people are naive to believe that many are not unjustified, exaggerated, and even specious claims aimed primarily at a tax-free income supplement. If you still are a skeptic, ask yourself this question (and be honest in your answer): If "service connection" would lead in all but the most severe cases, to "just" guaranteed medical care (for the specific illness) for life and there was no monetary compensation, do you thing claims would increase or decrease (eliminating the backlog in weeks nationally). I know and you know the honest answer.