After decade of war, impact of combat stress becomes clearer

[unhappycamper]

Lt. Cmdr. Paul Sargent is a psychiatrist who helped organize the Navy's first short-term residential PTSD treatment center for active-duty Marines and sailors. The facility unveiled this month in San Diego, called Overcoming Adversity and Stress Injury Support (OASIS), has space for 10 live-in patients. By next summer, capacity is planned to double.


After decade of war, impact of combat stress becomes clearer
By Gretel C. Kovach • U-T
Saturday, November 27, 2010 at 6 p.m.

A young soldier who returned from Iraq drives across the country to visit a buddy at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The patient’s legs have been blown off by a rocket-propelled grenade.

“Help me end this,” the wounded soldier pleads.

You’ve got to be tough, his friend, James, replied. “It’s our job to look out for each other.”

James has all his limbs, but he too is injured by the war and fighting for his life. His battle is post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

Guilt, fear and rage wake him with night terrors, isolate him from his wife, drive him to drink and, finally, to cram the barrel of a gun into his mouth.



unhappycamper comment: A whole 20 beds next summer? Wowsa.

The care our current crop of veterans get is about the same as my generation got when we extricated the US from Vietnam.

[sarge43]

1. Another generation thrown away for nothing. n/t

[w8liftinglady]

2. 20 beads for roughly 600,000 troops with ptsd(conservative estimate)

one in three suffer enough to warrant treatment.

Way to support the troops,you generous altruistic humanitarians.

Yeah,we've pretty much proven our troops are disposable.Use 'em up,spit 'em out.