400,000 Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Have Some Form of PTSD

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission estimates 400,000 veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan have some form of PTSD.

Mental trauma keeps Iraq vet from holding job
Fosters.com
Wednesday, October 8, 2014

HOUSTON (AP) — The past several months have given Xavier Watt the opportunity to ferry his 10-year-old daughter to and from school, take her to visit her grandparents and go out for ice cream. He does the grocery shopping and keeps the house clean for his wife and little girl. He has time left over to play video games.

It's not the kind of freedom he wants. For Watt, 31, also enjoys his job installing and calibrating temperature-control systems and heating elements as an instrument and electrical technician for SunEdison in Pasadena. He wishes he were still clocking in each day.

But like hundreds of thousands of soldiers back from the war in Iraq, Watt has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and is finding that complicates things in the workplace. He takes medication to control his dark moods, he's had extensive counseling to help him cope with conflict and he leans on his supportive family as he wrestles with scarring memories earned a decade ago far away.

He says he is OK to return to work and that he's got medical reports to prove it. So far, SunEdison won't let him back.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission estimates 400,000 veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan have some form of PTSD.

The agency has seen a spike in the number of PTSD-related complaints by workers. Many allege their companies failed to make accommodations for them in the workplace. Before 2002, the agency didn't track these types of complaints; in 2011, it received nearly 600 nationwide.

Joe Bontke, of the local EEOC office, said that when behavioral issues arise with war veterans, many employers' first question is, "What if he comes back with a gun?"
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That last statement shows that the military and the VA have done a lousy job of informing the public about what PTSD is and what it isn't.