Report from LA Times brings rare PTSD fakers to headline news that isn't

Before you read this article, notice the uptick in VA PTSD claims.

The increase started around the time most veterans had access to the internet.

In 2007 there was a report about 148,000 Vietnam veterans seeking help from the VA for PTSD for the first time.

In the past 18 months, 148,000 Vietnam veterans have gone to VA centers reporting symptoms of PTSD "30 years after the war," said Brig. Gen. Michael S. Tucker, deputy commanding general of the North Atlantic Regional Medical Command and Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He recently visited El Paso.

This is from the article on LA Times making the claim of veterans faking PTSD for financial gain.

"A 2007 study of 74 Arkansas veterans with chronic PTSD, most of them from the Vietnam War, concluded that more than half were exaggerating symptoms. Other research has found little evidence of malingering."

That is the biggest problem when someone claims something is happening, there are always other researchers disproving what was claimed. Do some lie? Sure but most veterans won't seek help because they were accused of faking while in the military, as we've seen repeated for decades and the twisted concept of what the general public believes PTSD to be.

If you're a Vietnam veteran you'll remember all the reports about "crazy Vietnam veterans" being arrested for the same things they have Veterans Courts for now.

Read the article and notice how this report was twisted around to prove a point instead of prove the number of fakers is more important that taking care of disabled veterans needing help but still not getting it. Suicides went up after the government did more to take care of them for a reason. They wanted help but the help they received has not worked in too many parts of the country.

As disability awards grow, so do concerns with veracity of PTSD claims
LA Times
By ALAN ZAREMBO
August 3, 2014

Thee 49-year-old veteran explained that he suffered from paranoia in crowds, nightmares and unrelenting flashbacks from the Iraq war. He said he needed his handgun to feel secure and worried that he would shoot somebody.

The symptoms were textbook post-traumatic stress disorder.

But Robert Moering, the psychologist conducting the disability examination at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Tampa, Fla., suspected the veteran was exaggerating. Hardly anybody had so many symptoms of PTSD so much of the time.

As disability awards for PTSD have grown nearly fivefold over the last 13 years, so have concerns that many veterans might be exaggerating or lying to win benefits. Moering, a former Marine, estimates that roughly half of the veterans he evaluates for the disorder exaggerate or fabricate symptoms.

PTSD disability Depending on severity, veterans with PTSD can receive up to $3,000 a month tax-free, making the disorder the biggest contributor to the growth of a disability system in which payments have more than doubled to $49 billion since 2002.

"It's an open secret that a large chunk of patients are flat-out malingering," said Christopher Frueh, a University of Hawaii psychologist who spent 15 years treating PTSD in the VA system. read the rest here

Last question is: Why would a reporter from LA interview a doctor in Tampa about Combat PTSD claims when there are so many in California? Did Alan Zarembo have to search from coast to coast to find doctors agreeing with what he wanted to report on?