""We are handicapped patients, too. Cut off both my legs, but give me my sanity."

[babylonsister]

This is heartwrenching - I recommend everyone read it. Instead of receiving focused attention, soldiers with combat-stress disorders are mixed in with psych patients who have issues ranging from schizophrenia to marital strife.:cry:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/17/AR2007061701351.html

Little Relief on Ward 53
At Walter Reed, Care for Soldiers Struggling With War's Mental Trauma Is Undermined by Doctor Shortages and Unfocused Methods

By Anne Hull and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, June 18, 2007; Page A01

On the military plane that crossed the ocean at night, the wounded lay in stretchers stacked three high. The drone of engines was broken by the occasional sound of moaning. Sedated and sleeping, Pfc. Joshua Calloway was at the top of one stack last September. Unlike the others around him, Calloway was handcuffed to his stretcher.

When the 20-year-old infantry soldier woke up, he was on the locked-down psychiatric ward at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. A nurse handed him pajamas and a robe, but they reminded him of the flowing clothes worn by Iraqi men. He told the nurse, "I don't want to look like a freakin' Haj." He wanted his uniform. Request denied. Shoelaces and belts were prohibited.

Calloway felt naked without his M-4, his constant companion during his tour south of Baghdad with the 101st Airborne Division. The year-long deployment claimed the lives of 50 soldiers in his brigade. Two committed suicide. Calloway, blue-eyed and lantern-jawed, lasted nine months -- until the afternoon he watched his sergeant step on a pressure-plate bomb in the road. The young soldier's knees buckled and he vomited in the reeds before he was ordered to help collect body parts. A few days later he was sent to the combat-stress trailers, where he was given antidepressants and rest, but after a week he was still twitching and sleepless. The Army decided that his war was over.

Every month, 20 to 40 soldiers are evacuated from Iraq because of mental problems, according to the Army. Most are sent to Walter Reed along with other war-wounded. For amputees, the nation's top Army hospital offers state-of-the-art prosthetics and physical rehab programs, and soon, a new $10 million amputee center with a rappelling wall and virtual reality center.

Nothing so gleaming exists for soldiers with diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder, who in the Army alone outnumber all of the war's amputees by 43 to 1. The Army has no PTSD center at Walter Reed, and its psychiatric treatment is weak compared with the best PTSD programs the government offers. Instead of receiving focused attention, soldiers with combat-stress disorders are mixed in with psych patients who have issues ranging from schizophrenia to marital strife.

more...

[MADem]

1. Every month, 20 to 40 soldiers are evacuated from Iraq because of mental problems

Ah but we know the GOP solution for that, don't we? A solid, Pattonesque slap across the face, an exhortation to "Buck up!!" else they'll be thought of as cowards and wimps!!

All spoken from the comfort of a good Republican barcolounger!

[babylonsister]

2. Yes, and then sent back to the frontlines. As long as it's not their kids... nt

[MADem]

3. The article really is a must-read. Some other points that jumped out at me were

these:

Individual therapy with a trained clinician, a key element in recovery from PTSD, is infrequent, and targeted group therapy is offered only twice a week....The recognized treatment for PTSD is cognitive behavioral therapy, in which patients are encouraged to face their feared memories or situations and to change their negative perceptions. A key technique is known as prolonged exposure therapy. It involves revisiting a traumatic memory in order to process it. The idea is not to erase the memory but to prevent it from being disabling. Highly structured, one-on-one sessions over a limited time period have proved most effective, according to Edna B. Foa, a professor of psychology in psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, who has been contracted by the Department of Veterans Affairs to train 250 therapists who treat PTSD.

But Calloway and a dozen other soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan interviewed by The Post described a vague regimen at Walter Reed's outpatient psychiatric unit, Ward 53. They get a heavy dose of group sessions such as "Reflecting with Music," "Decisions," "Feelings Exploration" and "Art Expressions." Calloway reported to his "Reel Reflections" class one morning for a screening of "The Devil Wears Prada." Only two hours a week are devoted to a post-traumatic recovery group, according to a copy of their schedule.

These soldiers said they are over-medicated and treated with none of the urgency given the physically wounded. One desperate patient, a combat medic who broke down after her third tour in Iraq, said she begged her psychiatrist: "We are handicapped patients, too. Cut off both my legs, but give me my sanity. You can't get a prosthesis for that."

In an interview this month, Col. John C. Bradley, head of psychiatry at Walter Reed, said soldiers with combat-stress disorders receive the accepted psychotherapeutic treatment there. He said they are placed in a specially designed "trauma track" and are given at least an hour of individual therapy a week and a full range of classes to help them cope with their symptoms. Exposure therapy is as effective in group settings as in individual sessions, he maintained -- a belief that runs counter to the latest clinical research.

Fucking idiots--they just DON'T get it.

But here's the biggest crime of all:

One of the country's best PTSD programs is located at Walter Reed, but because of a bureaucratic divide it is not accessible to most patients. The Deployment Health Clinical Center, run by the Department of Defense and separate from the Army's services, offers a three-week program of customized treatment. Individual exposure therapy and fewer medications are favored. Deployment Health can see only about 65 patients a year but is the envy of many in the Army. "They need to clone that program," said Col. Charles W. Hoge, chief of psychiatry and behavior services at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

Sixty five patients a year--that's what comes out of the sandbox every two months!

[babylonsister]

4. Yes, it's a MUST READ, DUers! Lots of sad facts in there. I would be

SO furious if I had a kid going through this!:grr: As it is, my b-i-l suffers from PTSD from VN; now I can understand a bit more what the guy has gone through.

[MADem]

5. Another kick.

[w8liftinglady]

7. my son has ptsd.There is no screening,no decompression after war.

they go from war to home then back to war then home.the Army is nice enough to provide a pamphlet,online,to help the families understand the changes war brings.
http://www.ncptsd.va.gov/ncmain/ncdocs/fact_shts/war_families.html
This lack of ACUTE intervention is-imho-the catalyst for the huge amount of ptsd.

[zippy890]

6. kick

[w8liftinglady]

8. kick

[ThomCat]

9. Kick and recommend.

They were sent off to Iraq for no good reason. They experienced these horrors as our soldiers. The least we can do is give them good mental healthcare.

The pentagon is the single biggest sinkhole in the federal budget. More of that money needs to benefit the soldiers, and less needs to benefit the defense industry.
x(

[Swede]

10. There are 600 military psychiatrists for the roughly 1 million troops that had a Iraq tour.

There will be hell to pay.

[lyonn]

11. Dana Priest is still on the job! This story is depressing.

People seem to ignore this PTS problem as if these patients are just weak and should pull themselves up by their bootstraps, good repub analogy. All this tells me is that they are the weak people, can't allow themselves to see the real uglies of the world, War for one.

Let us hope Dana gets the msg. out one more time, that the media will spend a little of their Paris Hilton time on this issue.

Gotta keep this near the top of the list!