Veterans with PTSD not getting what they need to heal

Invisible Scars : National PTSD Awareness Month Shines Spotlight on Devastating Psychological Disorder PTSD and Veterans
Carrington Education

“The first thing people ask when you get back is ‘Did you kill somebody? How many people did you kill?’” one Vietnam veteran told me. “They just don’t understand how inappropriate that question is. We did what we had to do. You want to know what PTSD is like? You can’t know what it means to sit, 40 years later, in front of a television set reliving the same 40 seconds, over and over and over. You can’t know. You don’t want to know. We don’t look any different on the outside. But on the inside…”

Every Monday evening in Nampa, Idaho, a group of twenty veterans gather to share stories and support. The men range in age from grizzled Vietnam warriors to young soldiers who have just returned from Afghanistan. On the night they invited me to visit, their leader and Warrior Pointe founder, Reed Pacheco, entered the room with a cell phone to his ear, brainstorming intervention strategies for a veteran who had threatened suicide.

Pacheco, a U.S. Army veteran of Desert Storm and Somalia pre 9/11, envisioned Warrior Pointe as a “safe zone” where former soldiers could come together to talk about the issues that continue to haunt them, including Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). “The VA (Veterans Administration) just isn’t there for us,” he said, as heads around the table nodded emphatically.

Tom Bosch, a Carrington College Massage Therapist Program graduate who served two tours with the U.S. Army in Iraq and suffered a traumatic brain injury in an IED attack, noted that “we have a small pharmacy around this table. The VA can give you lots of things for physical pain. But they can’t cure the mental pain.”

“The seventy-seven day siege of Khe Sanh hammered, pierced and drilled fear into the innards of our brains, the spot where fear resides beside the animal will to survive. We are forever alert, on guard, ready to laager, then attack. This is my PTSD,” said my friend Ken Rodgers, Marine, author, and documentary filmmaker when we were discussing the harrowing Vietnam War experiences that led him to write and produce Bravo: Common Men, Uncommon Valor. While Rodgers has been able to manage his condition, it’s something that he lives with every day.
read more here