Norfolk DA: Troubled vets need our help

[paineinthearse]

I missed this in the Hearald, but there was video on CNN Headline News this morning.

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http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=66615

Norfolk DA: Troubled vets need our help
By Brian Ballou
Thursday, February 3, 2005

Norfolk County's top prosecutor wants to ease the transition for combat soldiers returning home by developing a community-based ``safety net'' that could serve as a national model. Yesterday in Randolph, District Attorney William Keating brought together about 200 health, social service, and criminal justice officials and first responders from throughout the region for ``A Community Summit to Understand the Needs of Returning Combat Soldiers.'' ``Since the Civil War, history tells us that a small number of combat soldiers will have difficulty readjusting back to civilian life,'' Keating said.

According to the New England Journal of Medicine, an estimated one in six soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan will experience post-traumatic stress disorder. ``For this problem to be fully addressed, this must be the first of hundreds of community summits across the country,'' he said. Keating said he hopes to ``prevent the many tragedies other generations faced when dealing with the aftermath of war.'' One ex-Marine told of his difficulties readjusting.

``I was an extrovert before I went over there, but now I've closed in terribly,'' said Jeremiah Sparks, 25, of South Boston. ``I have a hard time sleeping, and sometimes I'll smell or hear something, and it will make me very edgy.'' His mother, Beth Princiotta, said she immediately noticed a difference in her son when she welcomed him home last year. ``The first thing I noticed was the shell-shock in his eyes,'' she said. ``There was no decompression for him. He left Iraq on a . . . jet and returned back home.''