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PTSD: Veterans' Health Care Is a Cost of War
As a former combat medic who spent 18 months in Vietnam and nearly 7 years

as a therapist and acting team leader in Providence, R.I., with the VA's Readjustment Counseling Program (or Vet Centers), the Washington Post's May 16, 2008, story "Official Urged Fewer Diagnoses of PTSD" sounded familiar.

Watching another generation of soldiers and veterans face a repeat of history with the Iraq war, I am outraged and feeling a sense of déjà vu. Unfortunately, this war is costing veterans the ability to truly "come home."

In 1979, the year the American Psychological Association made post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) the official diagnosis for victims of war trauma, Congress finally authorized the comprehensive Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act, which created Vet Centers, and I was hired by the VA. Throughout my VA service, I encountered attitudes that ran from indifference to open hostility towards veterans with PTSD. Other VA officials said virtually the same type of things as Norma Perez — psychologist and PTSD program team leader at the Department of Veterans Affairs' Olin E. Teague Veterans Center in Temple, Tex. — is quoted as saying in the Washington Post: "Don't tell vets they have PTSD because they'll want compensation" and words to that effect.

From the very beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I was one of many who cautioned, warned, and implored government officials at the Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Veteran Affairs (DVA), and Congress to increase the VA system's capacity for a substantial influx of returning soldiers with PTSD. In 2003 -2004, I attended DOD and VA briefings to voice concerns over a lack of resources and preparedness. Sadly, those warnings were ignored.

The problem is bigger than Perez or "repudiation [of PTSD as an issue] at the highest levels of DVA." Until government officials and the American people understand and accept that veterans' health care is a cost of war, their refusal to take PTSD seriously will amount to déjà vu - all over again.

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Comments

I went to Vietnam in

Submitted by John Jenkins (not verified) on Wed, 07/02/2008 - 2:38pm.
I went to Vietnam in December 1966 and returned to the states in December 1967. While there I was assigned to the 3rd Marine Division as a "Combat Historian" and was responsible for recording (either during or immediately after) any and all operations conducted by units of the Division. As I had already served in the Corps since 1961 before going to Vietnam, I was under no delusions about the right or wrong of the war, but as a career Marine, knew that without combat experience my chances for promotion after the end of hostilities would be nil, so went quite happily off to war. What no one told me was the level of personal damage, physical, emotional and mental, that would follow me forever. I was discharged in 1973 for "pre-existing spinal damage" and cut loose without the benefit of counsel or VA help (since rectified). It wasn't until 2000 when by happenstance I visited a "counseling center" in San Diego and a friend asked me if I was receiving my disability checks ok. He was surprised and truly dismayed when I informed him that I never received any checks from the VA or anyone else. As it finally turned out, my friend sent me to the VA hospital in San Diego for evaluation and only then was I rated as being 100% disabled due to both the physical problems I was having with my back and PTSD. The point of this is that now I'm seeing the current crop of young men and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan exhibiting all the symptoms of PTSD even with no outward evidence of physical damage. Are we to assume that these folks are going to have to endure 30 years of agony before getting help? Let us work to make sure we don't neglect these women and men like the Vietnam veterans were neglected.
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