PTSD Vietnam Veteran Died Detained Instead of Helped to Recover

If you still think the problems veterans face getting help for PTSD instead of being lock up is new they are not. Not much has changed no matter how much we seem all so willing to congratulate ourselves on how much we've done for them.

Another mentally ill inmate died of dehydration
News and Observer
Posted by Joseph Neff
September 25, 2014

A North Carolina prison inmate with a history of mental illness died of dehydration in March, according to an Associated Press report. All the details are not yet known, but there are a number of striking similarities to the 1996 of a Vietnam veteran who suffered from post traumatic stress.

A subsequent federal audit found a host of problems plaguing medical and mental-health care at Central Prison: inadequate staffing, an out-of-date facility, poor management and overuse of drugs and restraints in the psychiatric hospital.

In March, Anthony Michael Kerr, 53, died of dehydration while in care of Alexander Correctional Institution.

A damaged veteran:

Mabrey grew up in Roanoke Rapids, the oldest of four children. His father was a loom repairman for J.P. Stevens, working in the textile mill featured in the movie "Norma Rae."

Drafted after high school, Mabrey served in Vietnam from 1968 to 1970, escorting convoys, setting up ambushes and protecting an Army base in the Ia Drang Valley.

"It was rough," said Melvin Tharrington, a boyhood friend who recalled the night they spent pinned down under enemy fire for five hours. "Glen was good as gold. He was like a brother to me. He wasn't the same Glen I had known after he got back. I think it just really got to him."

A week after Mabrey's return, his mother heard noises in his bedroom. She found him in his closet crying, banging his head against the wall.

"Momma said he talked about all his friends coming back in body bags and it was too much for him," Hollowell, his sister, said.

He was a welder by trade, but had trouble holding a job. Diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome, Mabrey lived on monthly $ 900 disability checks.

He had numerous run-ins with the law resulting from his abuse of alcohol and cocaine: DWI, driving with a revoked license, larceny, writing bad checks. His first marriage ended. His second marriage was rocky. He was arrested for assaulting his wife, usually while he was drinking.
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