VA treats PTSD better than the private sector

Just a simple fact: The VA started all the research on PTSD, so you'd think they would be better prepared than the private sector. They have simply been doing it a lot longer. Veterans do not believe the private sector understands them at all.

Study finds that VA treats PTSD better than the private sector
Tampa Bay Times
By Les Neuhaus, Times Correspondent
May 30, 2016

"It either points to how good of a job the VA is doing or how bad of a job the private sector is doing."
Dr. Katherine Watkins

SEMINOLE — On May 10, 1967, U.S. Marine Corps infantryman John Paul was seriously wounded during a battle in South Vietnam's A Shau Valley near the North Vietnamese border.

"When I got hit, I was standing up,'' Paul, 67, recalled during a recent interview. "I was shot twice in the abdomen and left hip. … I thought I bought the farm."

He spent six months in a series of hospitals, and when he was discharged from the Marines, his limp was not his only reminder of his brush with death.

"I was a mess for years," he said, adding that he drank heavily to medicate the mixed feelings he had about the war.

In 1991, he started getting help for post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, at the C.W. Bill Young VA Medical Center at Bay Pines. A recent study published online in a journal produced by the American Psychiatric Association indicates he made a good choice.
read more here