Army Thinks They Did Nothing Wrong on Discharges?

Senators, Military Specialists Say Army Report On Dismissed Soldiers Is Troubling
NPR
Heard on Morning Edition
Daniel Zwerdling
December 1, 2016

The Army's report states that only 3,327 of the more than 22,000 soldiers who had been kicked out met that legal test. As a result, investigators ignored the rest of the soldiers — roughly 19,000 of them — who had mental health problems or brain injuries.

U.S. Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning ordered a review after an NPR

investigation found thousands of soldiers diagnosed with mental health

problems or brain injuries were dismissed for misconduct. But the new

Army report concluded that it treated the soldiers fairly.

Alex Wong/Getty Images

An Army review concludes that commanders did nothing wrong when they kicked out more than 22,000 soldiers for misconduct after they came back from Iraq or Afghanistan – even though all of those troops had been diagnosed with mental health problems or brain injuries.

The Army's report, ordered by Secretary Eric Fanning, seeks to reassure members of Congress that it's treating wounded soldiers fairly. But senators and military specialists say the report troubles them.

"I don't think the Army understands the scope of this problem," says Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. "And I don't think they've conveyed the seriousness to get it right."

The Army's report is "unbelievable," says psychiatrist Judith Broder. "It's just bizarre." Broder was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal by President Obama for organizing the Soldiers Project, a network of hundreds of psychotherapists and others who help troops and their families.
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Pentagon Health Plan Won't Cover Brain-Damage Therapy for Troops

Maybe this would have been ok in the 60's when they knew very little about brain damage. I wasn't even five when I was pushed off a slide and my scull was cracked plus damaged, but no one knew it at the time. Soon after this, I had to see a speech therapist, had trouble remembering and had a lot of headaches. Now we know a lot better because technology allows humans to see into the brain, see the damage done and then treat it to heal it. They need help to get back to their "normal" lives or as close as possible. They can get better!

Pentagon Health Plan Won't Cover Brain-Damage Therapy for Troops
T. CHRISTIAN MILLER and DANIEL ZWERDLING

December 20, 2010
During the past few decades, scientists have become increasingly persuaded that people who suffer brain injuries benefit from what is called cognitive rehabilitation therapy — a lengthy, painstaking process in which patients relearn basic life tasks such as counting, cooking or remembering directions to get home.

Many neurologists, several major insurance companies and even some medical facilities run by the Pentagon agree that the therapy can help people whose functioning has been diminished by blows to the head.

But despite pressure from Congress and the recommendations of military and civilian experts, the Pentagon’s health plan for troops and many veterans refuses to cover the treatment — a decision that could affect the tens of thousands of service members who have suffered brain damage while fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Tricare, an insurance-style program covering nearly 4 million active-duty military and retirees, says the scientific evidence does not justify providing comprehensive cognitive rehabilitation. Tricare officials say an assessment of the available research that they commissioned last year shows that the therapy is not well proven.

But an investigation by NPR and ProPublica found that internal and external reviewers of the Tricare-funded assessment criticized it as fundamentally misguided. Confidential documents obtained by NPR and ProPublica show that reviewers called the Tricare study "deeply flawed," "unacceptable" and"dismaying." One top scientist called the assessment a "misuse" of science designed to deny treatment for service members.

The Battle For Care Of The Wars' Signature Injuries

Tricare’s stance is also at odds with some medical groups, years of research and even other branches of the Pentagon. Last year, a panel of 50 civilian and military brain specialists convened by the Pentagon unanimously concluded that cognitive therapy was an effective treatment that would help many brain-damaged troops. More than a decade ago, a similar panel convened by the National Institutes of Health reached a similar consensus. Several peer-reviewed studies in the past few years have also endorsed cognitive therapy as a treatment for brain injury.

Tricare officials said their decisions are based on regulations requiring scientific proof of the efficacy and quality of treatment. But our investigation found that Tricare officials have worried in private meetings about the high cost of cognitive rehabilitation, which can cost $15,000 to $50,000 per soldier.
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Pentagon Health Plan Won't Cover Brain-Damage Therapy for Troops

Battle between PTSD and TBI?

We know the troops and veterans with PTSD have been misdiagnosed in order to cut the payments they will receive for this wound. They have been given tiny disability ratings in order to give them a one time payment without receiving free care for their wounds as well. We also know there is still a stigma attached to PTSD. Is this part of the problem?

The symptoms of TBI, Traumatic Brain Injury, are similar to PTSD. Do we have troops/veterans more readily claiming TBI than PTSD because there is no stigma attached to TBI? We really need to wonder if this is the case at least some of the time. Most TBI veterans also have PTSD but which one is the more dominate wound? Are they compensated for both or are they lumped in together? Do they receive treatment for TBI instead of PTSD? There are so many questions that need to be answered in order to provide the right treatment and compensation for their wounds but if they are reporting based on avoiding the stigma of PTSD, there is a huge problem because they will not be treated for the right wound and there is a huge difference between the two.

Officials: Troops hurt by brain-injury focus
By Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs are overemphasizing mild traumatic brain injury among combat troops at the expense of other medical problems that are going untreated, two Army mental health researchers say in an article that has raised intense objections from other scientists studying the condition.
Cols. Charles Hoge and Carl Castro say the military should scrap screening questions meant to uncover cases of mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) among troops returning from combat. Most troops who suffered a concussion in battle recovered within days of the injury, the researchers say.


Symptoms blamed on TBI after troops return home likely are due to depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or substance abuse, Hoge and Castro say, and the overemphasis on mild TBI keeps troops with those conditions from being properly treated.

Their article, published Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine, says the Pentagon and VA are relying on flawed science to identify what the Pentagon estimates may be up 360,000 cases of brain injury suffered by veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hoge and Castro have conducted some of the military's early and influential research on conditions such as PTSD.
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Army officials: Brain injuries overdiagnosed

PTSD and TBI getting $300 million worth of study

Pentagon spends $300M to study troops' stress, trauma
By Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY
The Pentagon is spending an unprecedented $300 million this summer on research for post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, offering hope not only for troops but hundreds of thousands of civilians.

The money — the most spent in one year on military medical research since a $210 million breast cancer study in 1993 — will fund 171 research projects on two of the most prevalent injuries of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Gregory O'Shanick, national medical director for the Brain Injury Association of America, says the funding initiative is "without a doubt … an all-time high" for spending by the government on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI). He says civilian victims will benefit directly from the military studies.

By contrast, the National Institutes of Health, the world's largest government sponsor of medical research with an annual budget of $28 billion, spends about $80 million per year on TBI research, according to the NIH.

The Pentagon also will target new ways of delivering therapy to PTSD victims living in remote areas of the USA and reducing the stigma that can keep victims from seeking help, she says.

The military funding will go toward evaluating up to 20 different medications for TBI, she says, and studying ways of regenerating damaged brain cells.

Half of the $300 million in Pentagon funds have been distributed, and all will be paid out by Sept. 30, Kaime says.

Congress has provided an additional $273.8 million this year to study battlefield injuries, some of which will also go toward researching PTSD and TBI.

A study released in April by the RAND Corp. think tank estimates 300,000 current or former combat troops have PTSD or depression, and up to 320,000 may have suffered a brain injury.

"We're in the midst of an exciting era for those who have been damaged," says Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., founder of the Congressional Brain Injury Task Force.