Traumatized Soldiers Coming Home

[babylonsister]

http://www.salon.com/news/special/coming_home/2009/02/14/coming_home_five/


Coming home: The conclusion

In the final article in Salon's series, we ask what President Obama will do about the rise of suicide and murder among U.S. soldiers returning from combat.

Editor's note: This is the conclusion to Salon's weeklong "Coming Home" series on preventable deaths at Fort Carson. You can read the introduction to the series here.

By Mark Benjamin and Michael de Yoanna
Pages 1 2


Top row, left to right: Kenneth Eastridge, Ryan Alderman, Adam Lieberman, Robert Marko. Bottom row: John Needham, Kenneth Lehman, Mark Waltz, Chad Barrett.


Feb. 14, 2009 | Two days after the election, the investigative arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office, released a list of the 13 issues requiring "urgent attention and continuing oversight" from the new administration and Congress. Listen to any politician. Surf the Web. Open a newspaper. You can probably draw up a list yourself pretty quickly, given the recession, two wars and killer peanut butter.

After scanning the headlines, you probably would not jot down the first agenda item on the GAO list of issues "needing the attention of President-elect Obama and the 111th Congress." The first issue on their list: "Caring for Service Members."

snip//

Throughout all of our reporting, we are unaware of any instance of the Army holding anyone accountable in any way -- from a soldier's first sergeant up to the Army surgeon general -- for any of the missteps documented in our articles.

Former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala served on a presidential commission, along with former Republican Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, to formulate solutions to the problems made famous at Walter Reed. Their July 2007 report heavily emphasized better diagnosis and treatment of invisible wounds like PTSD and brain injuries.

Dole and Shalala can correctly identify the problems, but a commission can't make the Army do much. "If one person is dying from something that is preventable, then we haven't gotten it right," Shalala told Salon in a telephone interview.

When asked what she would tell President Obama if given the chance, she responded, "I'd tell him to get ready. We've got a nightmarish situation."

"The problem with the pullout {of troops from Iraq} is not what it will do to Iraq, but what it will do to the United States of America if we are not ready with teams to absorb not simply these young men and women into our society and into our economy, but absorb them into our healthcare system with appropriate and sensitive treatment," she said. "One of the things we had better think about is if we are going to bring a bunch of troops back pretty quickly, we had better be ready for it." She also heavily emphasized preventing troubled soldiers from going to war in the first place.

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http://www.salon.com/news/special/coming_home/2009/02/14/coming_home_five/index.html

[undergroundpanther]

1. PSTD is a psychiatric injury.

And nobody should ever be shamed for the damage done.

People's minds really can get broken. By war, by rape, by child abuse, bullying etc.. And to deal with all the triggers, flashbacks, dissociation and other symptoms is so very hard to do for it is painful,a trigger can cause something like being stuck in a feedback loop where you relive the past over and over. That is made even harder to endure when there is nowhere to go for help.

PSTD is a real injury to the mind and soul of a person.
Refusing to diagnose it to those who suffer to cut costs of care is pure EVIL.

[mmonk]

2. Thanks for posting this. My cousin works for the VA and she has

some nightmare stories.

[Canuckistanian]

3. Mark my words. Iraq vets will become as bad a problem as Vietnam vets

There are a far higher percentage of vets coming back with severe PTSD, head traumas and severe injuries such as amputations and other injuries requiring reconstructive surgery.

This is mainly because the survival rates from severe injury are so much better than Vietnam because of medical advances.

Combine that with the decline in VA services and boneheaded Pentagon, Congressional policies and you've got a recipe for disaster - homelessness, drug abuse, violence and suicides.

THIS will be George Bush's lasting legacy.

[babylonsister]

4. I highly recommend this series in Salon; you are right, and it's

already started.