Veterans Attest to PTSD Neglect by VA
http://www.truthout.org/article/veterans-attest-ptsd-neglect-va
Recently released do***ents from the Department of Veterans Affairs
(VA) are further proof
the VA has failed to adequately address the crisis in veterans' mental
health care, according to
a former VA employee turned veterans' advocate.
In March, Norma J. Perez, the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
coordinator at a VA
facility in Temple, Texas, wrote an email (PDF) to her subordinates
stating: "Given that we have
more and more compensation seeking veterans, I'd like to suggest that you
refrain from giving a
diagnosis of PTSD straight out. Consider a diagnosis of adjustment
disorder, R/O [ruling out]
PTSD ... we really don't ... have time to do the extensive testing that
should be done to
determine PTSD."
In response, VA secretary James Peake said that the VA is "committed
to absolute accuracy
in a diagnosis and unwavering in providing any and all earned benefits.
PTSD and the mental
health arena is no exception." Peake placed the blame on Perez, saying
that the memo revealed
the mistake of a single employee, not VA policy.
However, the VA has been under fire from Congress and veterans'
rights groups for more than
a year for allegedly covering up and underre****ting the mental health care
crisis among veterans
returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. A lawsuit that is currently awaiting
a final ruling seeks
to force the VA to move quickly in addressing the mental and physical
health needs of veterans.
Paul Sullivan, the executive director of Veterans for Common Sense
(VCS), the veterans'
rights organization which brought the lawsuit, said the Perez email
exemplifies a larger trend.
"The bottom line is that VA under the Bush administration has dropped the
ball. The email sent
by Perez proves our lawsuit was correct - VA is short staffed for mental
health care and VA
intentionally misdiagnoses veterans in order to save money. VA was
illegally and unconscionably
turning away suicidal veterans in need of emergency mental health care. We
are asking the court
to order VA to stop this outrageous practice," Sullivan said.
New VA do***ents obtained exclusively by VCS using the Freedom of
Information Act indicate
the VA is only paying disability benefits for PTSD to 33,247 Iraq and
Afghanistan Veterans,
although 67,717 have been diagnosed with PTSD. According to Sullivan, VCS
is calling for an
investigation into this apparent discrepancy.
A Government Accountability Office (GAO) re****t in September 2007
stated that the VA's
"lack of early identification techniques" led to "inconsistent diagnosis
and treatment" of PTSD
and Traumatic Brain Injury. According to the GAO, early diagnosis is
essential in preventing
PTSD's consequences - which could be deadly.
Firsthand Accounts of PTSD Crisis
Kristofer Goldsmith, a former Army sergeant who was forced to stay in
the military beyond
his contract because of the "stop loss" order given by the president,
testified about his
experience with mental health care at Winter Soldier: Iraq and
Afghanistan.
"We were told that if we were to seek mental health, we would be
locked away and our
careers would not advance. If I admitted that I had severe chronic
depression, if I thought I
had PTSD ... my career could have been ruined," Goldsmith said.
He received an adjustment disorder diagnosis after experiencing a
panic attack in March
2007. Because he was not granted the PTSD label - despite displaying many
symptoms of the
disorder - he was ordered to deploy to Iraq for a second tour.
What Goldsmith described as a "sharp downward spiral" came to a head
the day before he was
scheduled to ****p back to Iraq with his unit.
"The day before I was supposed to deploy, Memorial Day, I went out
onto a field in Fort
Stewart and tried to take my own life ... I took pills and drank vodka
until I couldn't drink
anymore. The next thing I knew I was handcuffed to a gurney in the
hospital. The cops had found
me and literally dragged my body into an ambulance," Goldsmith said in his
testimony.
Finally, in October 2007, months after his suicide attempt, Goldsmith
received a PTSD
diagnosis from the VA.
According to Goldsmith, his experience was far from unique.
"While undergoing psychiatric treatment, I heard of many people being
diagnosed with
personality disorder and adjustment disorder instead of PTSD," Goldsmith
told Truthout. "I
believe this is a way for the Army to hide the levels of PTSD among its
ranks, through the usage
of misdiagnoses."
Suspicions about the VA's motives for misdiagnoses flared up over a
year ago, when a series
of news re****ts revealed many of the 22,500 soldiers diagnosed with
"personality disorder" since
2001 were actually suffering from PTSD. Taken in conjunction with a rising
suicide rate among
veterans, the re****ts sparked a flurry of investigations and Congressional
hearings.
"My concern is that this country is regressing and again ignoring
legitimate claims of PTSD
in favor of the time and money saving diagnosis of personality disorder,"
said Congressman Bob
Filner, chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, at a July 27
hearing. "I want to know
how the VA deals with veterans who have been labeled with a personality
disorder. Does the
burden fall on the veteran to prove that he or she doesn't have a
personality disorder? Will
such a diagnosis prevent the veteran from receiving health care once
initial VA coverage ends?
What extra barriers does this veteran face?"
Misdiagnosed vets are not only often deprived of proper treatment,
Filner noted; they also
miss out on condition-related benefits and subsidies. PTSD has attracted a
lot of legislative
attention over the past year, and new funding may soon become available
for veterans with that
diagnosis. Moreover, special programs geared toward PTSD are already in
motion at many VA
facilities, and vets without an official diagnosis are not eligible for
those treatments.
For Iraq veteran Joe Wheeler, a delayed VA diagnosis meant two years
of paying for his
psychotropic medications out of pocket, at a time when his tenuous mental
health made it tough
to hold a job. Wheeler's doctors immediately diagnosed him with PTSD, but
without an official VA
acknowledgment of his condition, he was left without benefits.
"I was never told why my diagnosis was delayed," Wheeler said. "It's
a faceless
bureaucracy; most people within the VA don't understand the system
themselves. And it's designed
to be adversarial. They make it hard so that it costs them less money."
Wheeler no longer seeks treatment at the VA, preferring the financial
strain of private
treatment to the psychological strain he endured under VA care. With a
different doctor - and
along with the switch, a new medication - every few months, his experience
at the VA was a saga
of fits and starts; not exactly a recipe for recovery.
Recent studies back up Goldsmith's and Wheeler's charges of VA
negligence in PTSD
diagnosis. According to Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Daniel
Akaka, the committee
has uncovered "widespread inadequate evaluation of veterans claiming
service-connection for PTSD
due to combat exposure and military ***ual trauma."
"Veterans often re****t to the Committee that during exams they were
not asked about their
military experience and received superficial evaluations," Akaka wrote in
a letter to VA
Secretary Peak last week. "Veterans' advocates re****t the reluctance of
some VA examiners to
provide a diagnosis of PTSD, even for veterans previously diagnosed with
PTSD."
Akaka added that while the VA's own "Best Practice Manual for
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Compensation and Pension Examinations" recommends a three-hour evaluation
session for every
potential PTSD sufferer, average exams clock in at 30 to 35 minutes.
Following the release of the Temple VA memo last week, Akaka
requested the Office of the
Inspector General begin an investigation into the PTSD diagnosis methods
at Temple.
"This incident is both disturbing and disappointing, and provides
further evidence that
VA's mental health program requires significant attention," Akaka said in
a statement on Friday.
"Psychological war wounds are difficult to diagnose and harder still to
heal, but they are no
less real than any other service-connected injury. I continue to be
concerned that VA's mental
health system is unprepared for the rising demands placed on the system."
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Finally, the campaigns of 1793 and 1794 set Clausewitz on the path of
recognizing war as a
political phenomenon. Wars, as everyone knew, were fought for a purpose
that was political,
or at least always had political consequences. Not as readily apparent
was the implication
that followed. If war was meant to achieve a political purpose, everything
that entered into
war — social and economic preparation, strategic planning, the conduct of
operations, the
use of violence on all levels — should be determined by this purpose, or
at least accord
with it. Even though soldiers had to acquire special expertise, and
function in what in some
respects was a separate world, it would be a denial of reality to allow
them to carry on
their bloody work undisturbed until an armistice brought their political
employer back into
the equation. Just as war and its institutions reflected their social
environment, so every
aspect of fighting should be suffused by its political impulse, whether
this impulse was
intense or moderate. The appropriate relation****p between politics and war
occupied
Clausewitz throughout his life, but even his earliest manuscripts and
letters show his
awareness of their interaction.
The ease with which this link — always acknowledged in the abstract —
can be forgotten in
specific cases, and Clausewitz’s insistence that it must never be
overlooked, are
illustrated by his polite rejection toward the end of his life of a
strategic problem set by
the chief of the Prussian General Staff, in which every military detail of
the opposing
sides was spelled out, but no mention made of their political purpose. To
a friend who had
sent him the problem for comment, Clausewitz replied that it was not
possible to draft a
sensible plan of operations without indicating the political condition of
the states
involved, and their relation****p to each other: ‘War is not an independent
phenomenon, but
the continuation of politics by different means. Consequently, the main
lines of every major
strategic plan are largely political in nature, and their political
character increases the
more the plan applies to the entire campaign and to the whole state. A war
plan results
directly from the political conditions of the two warring states, as well
as from their
relations to third powers. A plan of campaign results from the war plan,
and frequently - if
there is only one theater of operations - may even be identical with it.
But the political
element even enters the separate components of a campaign; rarely will it
be without
influence on such major episodes of warfare as a battle, etc. According to
this point of
view, there can be no question of a purely military evaluation of a great
strategic issue,
nor of a purely military scheme to solve it.’
Everyman’s Library, 1993 ISBN: 0679420436 On war /by Clausewitz, Carl
von, 1780-1831.
Knopf, 1993. From the introduction by Peter Paret, Pg7
_____________________________________________________________________
The U-2 is a jet-powered reconnaissance aircraft specially designed to fly
at high altitudes
(i.e., above 70,000 ft [21 km]). It was used during the late 1950s to
overfly the Soviet
Union, China, the Middle East, and Cuba; flights over the Soviet Union,
the primary mission
for which the plane was designed, ended in 1960 when a U-2 flown by CIA
pilot Gary Powers
was shot down over the Soviet Union. This event was a major political
embarrassment for the U.S.
http://www.espionageinfo.com/Te-Uk/U-2-Spy-Plane.html
Soviet Prime Minister Khrushchev's reaction to the overflights which
were discovered
just before a summit conference in Paris with President Eisenhower: "It
was as though the
Americans had deliberately tried to place a time bomb under the meeting" .
. ."How could
they count on us to give them a helping hand if we allowed ourselves to be
spat upon without
so much as a murmur of protest?" The only solution was to demand a formal
public apology
from Eisenhower and a guarantee that no more overflights would take place
. . .
But the apology Khrushchev was looking for would not come. Despite
having trespassed
on the Soviet Union for the past four years with scores of flights by both
U-2's and heavy
bombers, the old general still could not say the words, it was just not in
him. . . A time
bomb had exploded, prematurely ending the summit conference. . .
Back in Wa****ngton, the mood was glum. The Senate Foreign Relations
Committee was
leaning toward holding a closed door investigation into the U-2 incident .
. . In public,
Eisenhower maintained a brave face. He "heartily approved" of the
congressional probe and
would 'of course fully cooperate,' he quickly told anyone who asked. But
in private he was
very troubled. For weeks he had tried to head off the investigation. His
major concern was
that his own personal involvement in the overflights would surface,
especially the May Day
disaster. Equally, he was very worried that details of the dangerous
bomber overflights
would leak out. The massed overflight may in fact, have been one of the
most dangerous
actions ever approved by a president.
pg. 51-55 ~Body of Secrets; Anatomy of the Ultra Secret National Security
Agency
James Bamford
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of
the progress of
human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims,
have been born of
earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating,
all-absorbing, and for the time
being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does
nothing. If there is
no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and
yet depreciate
agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want
rain without
thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its
many waters."
"This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may
be both moral and
physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a
demand. It never did and
it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and
you have found out the
exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and
these will continue
till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The
limits of tyrants are
prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of
these ideas, Negroes
will be hunted at the North, and held and flogged at the South so long as
they submit to those
devilish outrages, and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men
may not get all they
pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we
ever get free from
the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal.
We must do this by
labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the
lives of others."
http://www.buildingequality.us/Quotes/Frederick_Douglass.htm
Frederick Douglass, 1857
- - - - - -> More political discussion continues at
http://www.politicsusaweb.com/
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