Battleland Contributor says PTSD claims incentive to keep it?

Ok, I admit it. I lost my temper this morning and left a comment on Time about some nonsense a "expert" posted. I can't help it. Usually I will just bypass what Elspeth Cameron Ritchie writes. She's a paid "expert" after all and I am just a lowly volunteer. Who am I to argue with someone like her?

Yesterday I posted how there was a report from NBC about PTSD deniers and now this!

The Unintended Consequences of the Current PTSD Diagnosis
Battleland
By Elspeth Cameron Ritchie
Nov. 27, 2012

This is the last in my series of posts on the ethics of treating post-traumatic stress disorder (the first simply outlined ethical issues for military mental-health personnel; then I wrote about when is the right time to send a Soldier back into combat, how can you maintain confidentiality between a Soldier and the mental-health professional, and why the military’s best mental-health programs are not available to everyone in uniform).

Now I want to discuss the good and bad consequences of automatically giving a 50% disability rating for PTSD.

I hesitate to post on this, as I know that there will be folks out there who say I am “trying to save the Army money by screwing the vets out of what is rightfully belongs to them.”

Know this is not my intention: I am all for vets receiving the disability that is due them.

But to give automatically 50% disability for one particular diagnosis creates a major incentive to get that diagnosis — and keep it.
read more here

This is the comment I left.

Are you talking to Sally Satel? After all that is the same kind of nonsense she has been talking about since she gave the same advice to the Bush Administration leading to the lack of planning to have programs and claims processors in place.


The first fact is that less than half of the veterans needing help for PTSD actually go for it. When the troops come home, this generation is no different than all others before them. They don't want to wait another second before they can return to their families. There are two differences between this generation and older veterans. One is that the media is finally reporting on what war does to those we send and the other is the redeployments increasing the risk of PTSD which the Army knew would happen in 2006.

If what you claim came close to being true, you'd see lines around every VA facility and processing centers implode. If they have PTSD, by the time they get help it is usually a lifetime change for them that does not go away. They can heal but that depends on the right help and above all the right information which you just stuck block to.