PTSD healthcare providers take hit under budget cuts

Following the deadliest year for suicides in the military, this is about to get worse with these cut backs. Why? As the article points out, longer wait times for appointments and therapists no longer feel they have job security. As bad as all of this has been, it takes years to receive special training in trauma and even more to treat combat PTSD. If you are not terrified of this, you haven't been paying attention.

I was right about Fort Hood after the massacre. I was right in 2009 when I warned about pushing "resilience" training" pushing more over the edge toward suicide. Right on pushing medication instead of therapy. Right on the need to address the spiritual aspect of all of this and while I really hope to be proven wrong on this, it won't just be time deciding how much I know. This time it will be even more lives lost.

Army: Health care for PTSD troops to suffer under budget cuts
By Kristina Wong
The Washington Times
Tuesday, March 12, 2013

The Army is worried about losing its civilian behavioral health care providers — who help troops deal with post traumatic stress disorder and other maladies — if they are forced to take 22 days of unpaid leave this year, an Army official said Tuesday.

About 60 percent of the Army’s 4,500 behavioral health care workers are civilians who would be subject to furloughs under the military’s spending reduction plan, said Col. Rebecca Porter, chief of behavioral health in the Office of the Army Surgeon General.

Speaking at breakfast meeting of a defense writers group in Washington, Col. Porter said the furloughs will result in longer wait times for care and fewer clinic hours for troops and their families.
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